Socialism - Heart and Head

 

The socialist movement is not only the heart but is a combination of the heart plus the head.

It is almost a truism to say that when the workers, as a class, couple their latent revolutionary fervour with socialist understanding, they become an indomitable force sweeping everything before it. 

“Nothing is more powerful than an idea come of age, it is more powerful than the strongest armies.” 

As to any fears that there is no room for differences of opinion in a socialist party, this simply isn’t so. Socialists have varying opinions on matters of a speculative nature, on interpretations of current events, on attitudes to cultural matters, specific aspects of science, even on projections of the actual workings of a socialist society.

 

We emphasise that the ballot is the lever of emancipation. We do this just because the conscious, socialist majority takes political action in order to be in a position to transfer the means of living from the hands of the parasites into the hands of society, as a whole. The ballot symbolises the nature of the socialist revolution. We advocate the ballot because we cannot visualise the need for a socialist majority to use violence. Violence does not symbolise the socialist revolution. However, we can get all tangled up in speculations of projecting possible contingencies that may exist in a future event. History may make liars out of us in predicting the workings of social forces based on scientific analyses. When we say that socialism is inevitable it always implies: barring unforeseen catastrophes such as pandemic plagues wiping out of the human race. However, given capitalism and its laws of motion, the next stage in social evolution is socialism.

For many years we have witnessed the supposed “success” of a series of practical efforts to rally workers to socialism by so-called clever policies. We have seen the transformation of these advocates of pragmatic socialist goals into supporters of the status quo — rebels who have been converted into modifying the system. Their trademark politics has become reforming, improving and administering capitalism.

Where are all the convinced socialists that the piecemeal reform approach was going to make? In the name of building up a socialist movement among the masses, they have emasculated and compromised socialist principles. When elected, they have actually administered capitalism is the only way it can be administered, in the interest of the capitalist class, even to the extent of supporting capitalist wars and crushing workers on strike. Look at the net result. Where are the socialist masses? As far as numbers are concerned the gradualists are not much better off than the Socialist Party. Their practical, realistic policies have proven worse than illusory. They have failed to make socialists. Yet they continue to heap scorn and sneer at the SPGB for our small numbers.

With smug omniscience, they dismiss the SPGB as “ivory tower Utopians,” “dogmatic sectarians,” “impossiblists,” etc. The real question is: Who have ignored the lessons of experience?

The Socialist Party of Great Britain has been confronted with scorn by those who campaign for something “in the meantime” and who are  actively participating in the “workers’ struggles.” The lure and fascinations of protests and demonstrations making demands on the government at every opportunity are very attractive. (In a sense, it does indicate how deeply-rooted discontent with capitalism really is, and it expresses the latent strength of socialism once the masses wake up to the need for changing the system instead of adjusting to it.) But — and this is the vital point — these activities are not in harmony with the immediate needs of our time: the making of socialists.

The lack of socialists is all that stands in the way of socialism, now. You can put these guys on the spot by asking: Where are the socialists you have obtained by your efforts? Their vaunted “fresh new approaches” prove to be very stale indeed.

For years their antecedents — the Labour Party with their gradualism, the Bolsheviks with their “revolutionary” programmes — actually gained victories on such practices. Yet they also served as recruiting sergeants for capitalist wars and the crushing of workers on strike. If there is one generalisation that could be applied to the Bolsheviks, Social Democrats, those who supported World War I, or on the issue of Fascism vs. Democracy, it is that they stood for their pet hobby-horse “burning issue of the day”. Recall the rhetoric: “Immediate Demands” and “Ultimate Demands.” We in the SPGB, are still being told, that “in the meantime” we must fight for some “priority” issue and we should join their ranks, the result, being capitalism administered in the name of “socialism.” All those “socialist governments” merely wound up administering capitalism for the capitalist class. And that is all that the radical progressive Left is able to do.

Had all that wasted energy, much of it earnest and sincere, been for socialism, what a great movement we could have had. 

Class Unity or Chaos

 

The times are ripe for socialism. We live in a world torn apart by crises and wars. Everywhere, capitalism is permanently mired in the bog of its own creation. Unemployment increases, poverty, undernourishment and sickness spread, prices rise and wages sink. As the world economic crisis deepens we can see the burden of the crisis being dumped increasingly on the shoulders of the working class. We can see government after government in the capitalist world enacting legislation with similar ends: to make the working class pay for the present crisis of capitalism. The basic struggle in society rages between the working class and the capitalist class, who are the enemy of the working people. Capitalism, while having developed the highest level of production, is a system of waste and inefficiency through useless competition and the alienation of men and women. Yet the working people remain outside the organisations for socialism. Why?

We live in a society that puts a price tag on everything. In order to bring about positive changes, we need a party that acts in our interests. The World Socialist Movement seek to change the economic laws governing society and human relations, by bringing order and plan into production. We would establish a genuine and meaningful democracy, collectively in control of the means whereby we live. There is no limit to the productivity of new technologies. But production is shackled by the capitalists who are guided by their lust for profit and not by the wants and needs of working people.

The workers must organise their forces for the complete overthrow of the system of wage slavery. Parliamentary activity, important though it be, is not enough. Our struggle must be carried on with the view of complete liberation from the profit system. The only power that can save humanity from the peril of barbarism is the working class. It must free itself of all dependence on the possessing classes. It must cease all collaboration with the exploiters and embark on the road of class struggle.

Civilisation forever hovers at the edge of an abyss. Socialism is the solution. The private property system is the enemy. Production must be released from the fetters of private property and profits. The resources of the world must pass into the possession of working humanity. All other problems, the problems of nationalism and of race and colour will be solved once society is freed from exploitation and class divisions. 

To maintain their class rule the capitalists have a number of political parties to defend their interests. These parties have different names, defend different policies, and use different rhetoric, but all serve the ruling class to maintain its domination over the workers. One of the most important tasks of the Socialist Party is to wage a determined struggle to expose these bourgeois parties and win the workers from their influence and to the cause of the socialist revolution.

It is a party of which the elected delegates will remain the servants – not become the masters. We stand for a world that can eliminate poverty and hunger and war, a world in which freedom is more than a word in a dictionary. For most people democracy remains a word without meaning.  We seek a world in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the producers themselves and the products of mankind are available to all. Around the world humanity is saying "Enough". The potential of mankind is virtually limitless if it is freed from economic and social oppression.

The SPGB stands for socialism. We have no illusions that the way will be easy, no visions of quick success. But the future belongs to humanity and the socialists.

Changing the World

 The wage system, under which labour has been reduced to a commodity, and millions of working people depend for their livelihood upon the permission of an employer, will be replaced by the cooperative system under which all may engage in useful occupation and work together in harmonious cooperation for the uplifting of humanity and the advancement of our civilisation.

Socialism starts out with the truism that our present system divides society into two classes, the “have all” and the “have nothing” class, and that it is the great mass of the people that do all the useful work who belong to the “have nothing” class. Socialism is class conscious. This does not mean that the Socialist Party must hate every capitalist individually, that some should be picked out as “scapegoats” while the economic power and political encroachment of all the others should be silently submitted to. It means that while we understand that every individual capitalist is the result of the present system as much as the wage worker, we still must fight the capitalists as a class because the producers cannot reasonably expect anything but exploitation from the exploiters as a class.

In spite of great economic expansion, working people do not benefit adequately from the increased wealth produced. Greater wealth and economic power continue to be concentrated in the hands of relatively few private corporations. The gap between those at the bottom and those at the top of the economic scale has widened. Millions still live in misery and insecurity condemned to a cheerless life, lacking dignity.

The world is characterised by stark inequalities of wealth and by the domination of the ruling group. Corporate wealth has resulted in a virtual economic dictatorship by a privileged few. The scramble for profits and the lack of any social planning despoils our planet’s rich resources.

The Socialist Party believes that our planet wise development and protection of its natural environment. Our industry can and should be so operated as to enable working people to use fully their talents and skills for the satisfaction of human needs. Unprecedented scientific advances have brought us to the threshold of a new technological revolution. Opportunities for enriching the standard of life are greater than ever. The challenge facing us today is whether future progress will continue to perpetuate the inequalities of the past or whether it can be based on principles of social justice. Economic expansion accompanied by widespread suffering and distress is not desirable. A society motivated by the drive for private gain and special advantage is one to aspire towards. 

The SPGB seeks a society where relationships are built upon mutual respect and on equality of opportunity, a society where everyone will have a sense of worth and belonging and will be enabled to develop his or her abilities to the full. It is the cooperative commonwealth we strive for in the battle of ideas for people's minds to banish forever the fear of oppression and to free ourselves from aggression and repression.

The poor, hungry and underprivileged of the world must know democracy not as a slogan but as a way of life that sees the world as one whole. The WSM will not rest content until every person in every land is able to enjoy equality and freedom to live a prosperous and meaningful life as a citizen of a bountiful peaceful world. This is the cooperative commonwealth which the Socialist Party invites all others to join together and to build where states, territories, or provinces will exist only as geographical expressions and have no existence as sources of governmental power other than perhaps seats of administrative bodies. The political state of capitalism has no place inside the cooperative commonwealth.

 

We aim to replace the present capitalist system, with its inherent inhumanity, with a society from which the domination and exploitation of one class by another will be eliminated. The new social system at which we aim is not one in which individuality will be crushed by an order of regimentation. What we seek is a proper collective organisation of our economic resources such as will make possible a much greater degree of leisure and a much richer individual life for every citizen.  The Socialist Party aims at political power so to put an end to this capitalist domination of our life. It is a democratic movement seeking to achieve its ends solely by constitutional methods. It appeals for support to all who believe that the time has come for a far-reaching reconstruction of our economic and political institutions and who are willing to work together for the carrying out of our goal.

Socialist Standard No 1410 February 2022

PDF version SS FEBRUARY 2022

• Editorial – Sabre-rattling over Ukraine

• Pathfinders – Is capitalism making us lose our marbles?

• Colston verdict – the big picture

• Cooking the Books 1 – Unfair Shares

• Bird’s Eye View

• Was Money Abolished in Cambodia?

• Uprising in Kazakhstan

• Reading Capital as Crisis Theory: Part 2

• The Bogey of Overpopulation

• Death of a Sociobiologist

• Consumerism and Literature – The Epoch That Ate the World

• Cooking the Books 2 – The Return of Tariff Reform

• Proper Gander – The Shape Of Things To Comet

• Book Reviews – Always Red / Burning the Books: a History of Knowledge Under Attack / Sylvia Pankhurst: A Suffragette in America

• 50 Years Ago – Student Unions

• Meetings

• Life and Times – The Charity Shop Manager
  

Technology and Science

 

Near-future science fiction frequently explores the possibilities of imminent technologies – gadgets that haven’t been designed yet but could be given recent real advances in technology and design. Whilst its track record on such predictions – such as us getting to Mars by 1977 and everyone having flying cars – have been a bit wide of the mark, others have been much closer and in fact actively conservative compared to the real historical record. Scientists can be very far-sighted but at the same time have only a very narrow field of view, like a blinkered racehorse. 

William Morris's News From Nowhere famously describes a deliberately low-tech socialist society in which people have eschewed the benefits of technology and adopted simple ways of doing things, although arguably he cheats by powering his 'force barges' with some mysterious energy source he never explains, thus hiding his technology rather than really abolishing it. Nonetheless, this is unusual in that most portraits of the future, whether socialist or not, depict a society of advanced technological splendour in which all our needs are met by a range of technical apparatuses only a voice-command away. The amount of electronic appliances in the average household now massively outweighs that of fifty years ago, and half a century from now we may shudder at the poverty of gadgetry suffered in the early 21st century. But it is not necessarily the case that a socialist society will produce an equal amount of high-tech gadgetry. Because socialist production will meet real rather than false needs, it could be that socialism might be a low-gadget society. Although mobile phones, Ipads, laptops and so on can satisfy some actual needs, it is mainly sociologically - and psychologically - induced perceived needs they actually satisfy, such as the need for conforming to group norms, the desire for prestige, and the belief that a product brings contentment. And because these items are produced to satisfy manipulated needs, they can have little use-value. So if socialism will be a society that relies far less on gadgets, it is only because it will be a more honest society than the present one, without artificial needs.

Most people have no direct experience of science, only of the technology that is an almost incidental by-product of it, yet capitalism pours billions into pure scientific research despite the fact that virtually none of it will ever yield a profit. Why? Because the one per cent that does make a profit will pay for the 99 per cent that doesn't. In capitalism, science is a huge gamble that only occasionally results in a win, but bets are never placed on research that helps people who can't pay.

Scientists do have their heroes, but they don't worship them as infallible gurus because it is recognised that argument from authority is inferior to an argument from evidence. Socialists take the same view of Marx and other revolutionary thinkers. Non-market, non-hierarchical socialism, which has no such agenda and which can therefore collectively determine the best course of action based on the available evidence. In science good ideas are not taken seriously enough when they come from people of low status in the academic world; conversely, the ideas of high-status people are often taken too seriously. The scientific method suffers because science is organised hierarchically. The problem with science in capitalism is that scientists have mortgages to pay, so they need to chase funding because they can't afford to work for free. 

"Science uses commodities and is part of the process of commodity production. Science uses money. People earn their living by science, and as a consequence the dominant social and economic forces in society determine to a large extent what science does and how it does it."(The Doctrine of DNA by R.C. Lewontin.)

And what will socialism do with pure research? Carry on the same way? Hardly. What we can say for sure is that curiosity is not likely to be dimmed by some inexplicable post-capitalist apathy in a society that releases scientists as well as all other workers from the compulsion to direct their efforts towards only those endeavours that the capitalist class sees an interest in funding. So what approach would socialist society take to the great scientific project? Priorities would certainly be different. Drug research, for instance, will not occur in capitalism if the R and D cost is not likely to be recouped, thus diseases rife in poor countries are overlooked while popular research projects are based on global sales estimates such as anti-depressants. Much of the pharmaceutical industry would be obsolete or transformed anyway if one can assume, after capitalism, a dramatic fall in heart disease and obesity, two wealth-related conditions for which the present drug market is principally geared, and an even more dramatic fall in poverty and stress-related diseases which presently do not even merit scientific attention. Similarly, science would no longer be prostrate at the feet of the military where global military spending is in the trillions. While some other lines of research would probably end, for example, cosmetics, including most animal testing which is for this purpose, there would be a clear need for continued work in climatology, energy, epidemiology and many others, but it is questionable whether a socialist community would have the same passion to send humans to Mars or to build space hotels. In socialism, science will still be a gamble, but with the difference that no knowledge thus gained can ever be money lost. It may be that the huge time, resource and work investment in such projects as Atlas and the Large Hadron Collider, the LIGO gravitational wave detector or the AMANDA neutrino telescope will continue in socialism, but if they do it will be because the population understands and respects scientific enquiry for its own sake, and not because they are expecting to get a new groovy gadget out of it.

The freedom from patent and copyright restrictions, which are forms of private ownership and will thus be abolished, will almost certainly unlock a tidal wave of new development which may revolutionise areas of science that are currently at a near-standstill, for instance, drug research and computing. In addition, the justifiable fear of what corporations, governments and the military might do with horizon science will no longer hold back developments in gene research and nanotechnology.

 

Lastly, the ending of male domination of science, in which men are four times more likely than women to be scientists will produce a vast influx of new talent and new ideas that can only advance scientific effort for the acquisition of knowledge and ultimately the betterment of humanity.

There are times, though, when even some scientists start to sound a little reactionary, self-righteous and sanctimonious on their own account. One such instance is the issue of animal rights. Scientists tend to be very defensive about animal research, but their arguments, that such research is always necessary, tightly controlled, responsible and largely painless, are at best questionable and sometimes plain wrong, depending as they do on an idealised representation of scientific research as it is supposed to be, and not as it actually exists in the dollar-hungry world of capitalist corporations. Scientists do not help their own case with simplistic no-brainer dilemmas like “your dog, or your child”, which imply that all testing is for the common good and which gloss over the large proportion of experiments done for cosmetics, food colourings, and other non-health-related products.

 Socialists are not unduly sentimental about animals and consider that a human’s first loyalty should be their own species. Nevertheless, the degree to which human society is ‘civilised’ can reasonably be gauged by its treatment of animals and the natural world as well as by its treatment of humans, and socialism, in its abolition of all aspects of the appalling savagery of capitalism, will undoubtedly do its part to abolish all unnecessary suffering by non-human sentient creatures. Even in socialism, where there would be little likelihood of animal testing for non-medical purposes, e.g. cosmetics. Socialist science would (if it decided to do so at all) conduct animal research only under conditions of strict and peer-assessed necessity, and with attendant informed public debate, two key factors notable for their general absence today.

Technology is often seen as either the salvation or the scourge of humankind. Some of us are inclined to be technophiles and others techno-sceptics and others a bit of both. That is not to say, though, that the case for socialism rests on developing technology. It is neither possible nor desirable to abolish technology. Without it, we would have to go back to a much harsher form of living. Few people would deny that among the changes technology has brought there have been tremendous improvements to our productive capabilities, if not always to our personal circumstances, or that in a socialist society modern technology will be vital in making sure everyone gets adequate food, housing and medical care. What is required is to change the basis of society so that technology can be developed and applied in the interests of the majority. Neither nanotechnology nor genetic modification is required for socialism. Socialism will take, adapt and use technology as it finds it. What socialism must do, however, is change our relationship with our tools, so that we can take control of our own destinies.