Our Aim is Revolution

 

The aim of trade unionists is not socialism and, therefore, the principles and policy of The Socialist Party is quite distinct from those of trade unions which are organised within capitalism to “collectively bargain” with employers terms of wage slavery. The Socialist Party’s aim is to abolish wage slavery and establish socialism.

 

We fully acknowledge and accept the necessity of trade unions under capitalism, and, therefore, endeavour to make them more effective by urging the workers to recognise the class struggle and its implications. The spread of socialist knowledge is the best antidote to the poison of union bureaucrats and is the only policy to hasten the abolition of wage slavery which trade unions are powerless to accomplish. 

 

The workers are today expressing dissatisfaction with their standard of living. This discontent is manifested in the trade unions in which each member aims at promoting his own individual interest, or rather, we should say, apparent interest. To do this more effectively, one is obliged, often against his or her immediate desire, to unite with fellow workers and employ the machinery of the trade union to fulfil the common collective demands of the whole body of workers. In order to benefit individually, the workers must act collectively; it is a condition forced upon them by the very magnitude of the modern economic system.

 

Under the present economic system the worker receives only a small fraction of the wealth he or she produces. The scale of wages is determined, on average, by the cost of one's subsistence and reproduction. An increased wage scale is, therefore, only of temporary benefit to the workers. The solution of the Socialist Party, briefly stated, is to secure, not a larger fraction of the wealth produced, but actually the whole value of the productions. It is the one indispensable condition by which capitalist exploitation will definitely cease to exist and for which the class war, as the collective endeavour of individuals, must be waged.

 

The secret of the capitalists’ power is the fact that they own the means of production, giving them illimitable authority over the whole social system. The worker’s aim, therefore, must be to capture the means of production. This is a task in which the solemn worship of divinity in any form will avail nothing. It will be accomplished only when a workers’ class-conscious majority has achieved political power and wields it in the communal interest. This being established, social progress enters upon a new lease of life which is the only socialism.

 

Socialism, therefore, far from advocating escape from self really teaches the doctrine of self-interest as the essential feature of a contented community. It is the ideal by the attainment of which the emancipation of the working class and, with it, of society at large will be established. The workers must learn to cease being satisfied with the crumbs which fall from the richly spread table of capitalism, Nor is it enough that when the crumbs cease to fall, they beg like Oliver Twist for more. They must stimulate their individual interests to the fullest limit and vote for socialism, i.e., the collective ownership of the means of life It is a simple doctrine, but an all-engaging one. 

 

After the socialist has demolished in argument the case for capitalism opponents fall back on one stock defence. We are asked for a description of socialistic society, and when informed that all that can be said about it with certainty is that it will be a society in which the means of production and distribution will be communally owned, and democratically controlled, in which production will be for use and not for profit, critics cry, “There you are. You’ve got nothing constructive to offer. Your policy is wholly destructive, and your remedies vague and nebulous.” And that allegation comforts  and provides our opponents with a justification for supporting capitalism which in argument they have had to admit cannot itself be justified. It is an old cry, but because it is being raised continuously it is worth while dealing with it.

 

The main charge made by socialists against capitalism is that it fails to deliver the goods. The contradictions inherent in the system which is based on individual ownership and social productions prevent goods being produced in the quantities they might be. The system acts as a “fetter on production,” and it is because of that that we condemn it.

 

The question of distribution is only of secondary importance as compared with that of removing those fetters on production. Capitalism maintains an army of unemployed at both ends of society, under it many workers are employed unproductively, it presents the spectacle of equipment standing idle while those who could use it starve, it reveals putting checks on the bounty of nature and restricting the production of rubber, tea, etc. It should be apparent then, even to a radical, that anything that removes these evils will increase the wealth of the community. As they are inherent in capitalism they can only be ended by abolishing the system. To tinker about with reforms will do nothing. It can only be the product of the class conscious desire of the workers themselves.

 

Our New Future

 Two of the branches of scientific work that have done more to revolutionise human thought than any others are those known as Darwinism and Socialism. Though both these owe their final achievements to the painstaking research of many previous investigators, it was not until time and development had provided the material for proof and demonstration that they were raised to a scientific position by Darwin and Marx respectively. The previously held belief in a supernatural creation of plants and animals had received rude shocks by the discovery of fossil remains that apparently could not be related to existing species. As new methods of grouping and classification came with increased knowledge a closer examination revealed resemblances between species both fossil and living. The fish and the amphibian, the reptile and the bird, the anthropoid ape and primitive man; could there be a remote relationship? The theory of descent grew. It was at this stage that Darwin undertook his patient investigations. In his autobiography he says:

“In October, 1838, that is 15 months after I had begun my systematic inquiry, I happened to read for amusement Malthus on population, and, being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence which everywhere goes on from long continuous observation of the habits of animals and plants, it at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The result of this would be the formation of new species. Here then I had at last got a theory by which to work.”

In passing, we may mention that Malthus was a capitalist apologist who claimed that population increased faster than subsistence and that therefore working-class poverty was inevitable and natural. His theory was, many years ago, completely shattered by Godwin and Henry George in “On Population,” and “Progress and Poverty” respectively. Dr. Alfred Wallace, Darwin’s co-worker, showed conclusively in “The Wonderful Century” that even under capitalism during the last century our powers of production increased ten times greater than the population. To aid him in his studies Darwin turned to that branch of plant and animal reproduction that mankind consciously operates upon in order to breed special types, the racehorse or the heavy shire, the whippet or the bulldog, the various breeds of pigeons, all of which can be made to vary more than wild species. Did this artificial selection by which man bred new species have its counterpart in natural forces? In his works “Origin of Species” and “Descent of Man,” Darwin showed that it had. The gradual advance of plant and animal life had been brought about by an intense struggle with natural obstacles. The peace and tranquillity of nature sung by the poet is an eternal struggle to maintain existence. The lower forms of life have powers of reproduction far in excess of their available subsistence (not civilised humans, note), hence the two great motive forces, the preservation of the individual and the species, is impelling forces to warfare. Those that can defend and protect themselves against enemies and conditions in the struggle for existence by any sort of advantage, acquired from generation to generation, will be the new species “fittest to survive.” The failures will be exterminated: The struggle is carried a step further by those animals that live in groups or are gregarious. Their combined powers give them a new strength of protection both for themselves and their young. Bearing in mind the immense periods of time taken for development in nature’s working it will become more clear how such groups developed social feelings, instincts and advantages, that enabled them to struggle successfully right up to the man-like apes, our progenitors in the line of development.

 

The final step that enables man to emerge from the animal kingdom is the making and use of tools. He acquires the first rudiments of speech and becomes “primitive man.” Space only permits of a brief mention of the proofs of the correctness of Darwin’s theory. Man within his body contains many rudimentary parts only explicable on the basis of his lowly origin. The physical and mental differences of living races of men are greater than those between the lowest men and the highest apes, and a study of embryology shows that the human embryo recapitulates the whole history of the evolution of the species, the last form left behind is that of the anthropoid ape.

 

What organs are to the animal world, tools are to mankind. These man-made tools in conjunction with other discoveries give him a great advantage in the struggle for the food supply over the animals, he is indeed able to dominate them and later domesticate them. Struggle at this stage does not cease, it merely takes a different form, those groups or tribes of men who possess better tools and weapons compete more successfully in the conflict and struggle now takes place between tribe and tribe. Further development in tools and methods of production makes the preservation of those captured in conflict desirable, a surplus can be produced, slavery begins :

 

All history says Marx “is the history of class struggles ” (i.e., since the break up of the tribes) and thus he supplies the key :

“In every epoch the prevailing mode of social production and exchange, and the social organisation necessarily following from it, form the basis upon which is built up, and from which alone can be explained, the political and intellectual history of that epoch.” (Communist Manifesto).

As with Darwin and Wallace in the domain of natural history, so with Marx and Engels in the materialistic conception of history. Marx shows that with changed economic conditions, come, new social classes, new ideas, new interests. The subject class that has sought to possess tools or means of livelihood has always fought for political supremacy. Every class struggle must be a political struggle. The decline of the Roman Empire, the French Revolution, the vast changes within capitalism including the growing conscious discontent of the workers, can only be explained by Marx’s theory.

 

The handicraft worker had a mentality different from the city proletariat of today, the conditions had not developed the socialist who is a product of the modern slave system of social production: What then is the struggle that is paramount to the socialist? It is the class struggle, it is the struggle between the producers and the non-producers who possess and control the means of life, between the wage workers and the capitalists. To remove poverty and degradation the workers must wage that struggle consciously for the establishment of a higher order of society in which class distinctions will be abolished and all can enjoy the comfort and leisure modern means make possible. The decadent parasites of capital will be no match for a majority organised for socialism. It will indeed be “the survival of the fittest.” 

The aim of the socialist is to get all to work harmoniously together on a basis of equality, as only by doing so can each develop himself to the fullest degree and enjoy the best of life—Men and women are social animals.

 

If the workers would be free they must throw off these religious shackles, and struggle until their class conquers economic freedom in order that the groans of the hungry, the cries of the outcasts, and the whines of the religious, shall alike take their places in the annals of the past. I have retrained, as far as possible, from touching upon points and arguments that are already fully dealt with in the pamphlet that is the subject of attack.

 

Socialism is Community

There is nothing like victory to give workers confidence. Under capitalism, you don't always win even if you fight hard. The system is weighted in favour of the capitalists, and it takes a lot of hard struggle for workers to win battles in the class war. For the past couple of centuries the workers have been pressing on. And the capitalists have been pushing back. With their police scab-herders and their anti-union laws and their puppet Judges and their parties of Left and Right who seek to run the wages system, our class enemies have pushed and pushed. The tragedy is that workers are  still fighting, when we can muster the confidence to fight, for the crumbs from the cake we ourselves bake. We should learn from the events that it is the wages system itself which is our enemy; only its abolition will mark the true victory of the working class.

 

The Socialist Party repudiates the myth that humans are inherently anti-social and uncooperative, and state emphatically that human nature is no barrier to a sane, socialist society. It rejects the economics of capitalism, which assert that we need buying and selling and prices to determine what people need; price-free access to all goods and services for everyone is the only way to allocate goods efficiently. We are seeing again the intensifying of human hardship side-by-side with surpluses of goods which the market cannot absorb. Which should just serve to remind us that capitalism is still a system of bitter contradictions which no government can iron out. They will disappear only when capitalism itself is abolished and socialism takes its place.

 

We know that capitalism will give workers all over the world insecurity and unemployment. It will grind out poverty and restriction and condemn millions of people to live, drab, inadequate lives. It may even give us frights like a war over Ukraine or South China Sea.

 

Socialism will finish the insecurities and the anomalies which blight our lives from one end of the year to another. The best we can wish ourselves is that the world working class will get enough understanding of society to throw off the system which restricts and condemns them and replace it with one in which happiness and plenty are no longer an empty dream.

 

The inadequacies of capitalism will play their part in bringing them to this. So to our readers in the slums nd in the other drab, dingy working class homes; to the unemployed and to those who know that their living is insecure; to those who hate and fear war: to all those who wish and work for a world fit for humans to live in. Many people insist that socialism means we would all have to conform while capitalism opposes this and encourages individuality. The truth is that capitalism dislikes individuality and loves conformity.

 

In a war between dictatorship and democracy, we are not indifferent in regard to the issue. It is plain that under a dictatorship you are robotised: you do not think, you obey; under a democracy you imbibe ideas, carefully fostered, which result in causing you to believe you are following your own inclinations when safeguarding ruling class interests.The crimes of dictators smell to high heavens, and the hypocrisy of the leaders of democracy arouse disgust amongst those to whom working class interests are paramount. 

 

We much prefer a democracy to a dictatorship. We freely acknowledge that we prefer the latter, because, under a Democracy, there is a better chance for the laws of social evolution to work themselves out without unnecessary violence. We have been brought up that way, but when we see the dangling carrots held in front of the donkey to induce it to pull the load, we are wise to the game. In peace or war, so long as capitalism shall last, the wage slave is doomed to drag his or her heavy burden, and to receive as a recompense just about sufficient to do so.

 

Do the workers have the political capacity to overthrow capitalism? From its very beginning the Socialist Party has answered in the affirmative.It has taken the workers longer to gain power than we foresaw, but the class wars and industrial conflicts in which the workers have the opportunity to learn great political lessons have neither ceased nor diminished. This provides the workers with greater, large-scale opportunities to learn, for instance, that capitalism has nothing to offer them but mass misery. The bankruptcy of capitalism, which is increasingly evident to the workers, is a vital factor in any consideration of revolutionary prospects. Workers are far from the “impotence’’ attributed to them and there exists sufficient evidence of a vast reservoir of revolutionary energy stored up.

 

 The Socialist Party says that workers in Britain or Russia, or the United States, or France and elsewhere throughout the world, can solve the problems of poverty in a world of potential plenty, by organising to establish a new and completely different form of a society of production of wealth solely for use and the satisfaction of needs. Such a society would not be Heaven on Earth or Utopia; but it would soon tackle, and solve, the basic problems thrown up by capitalism. And that is more than enough.

Social Democracy is Socialism

 

Social Democracy is but another term for socialism. The words "freedom and equality" are part of the political vocabulary of each and every one of us. But if asked: What is freedom? and you will be told, "Freedom means freedom of opinion, freedom of the press, freedom of association and assembly".

Ask: What is equality? and you will be told: "All citizens are equal before the law, with no difference between the high-born and the yokel."

Such definitions have nothing to do with true freedom or true equality. 

A revolution in one country is certainly not feasible. Also from an economic point of view. An economic crisis cannot remain isolated in one country. It transcends as you know all countries. The system is international. 

The Socialist Party is positive and constructive. It stands for complete political and industrial democracy. We earnestly urge all fellow workers to join us to bring order out of chaos and happiness out of misery. The struggle of the proletariat for emancipation must be fought along political lines, using in the immediate struggle the parliamentary phase of political action by electing where possible our representative to political office. Our first aim must be winning to our cause the mass of the proletariat by propagating revolutionary principles. The great goal toward which we all strive, namely, industrial democracy – that is, that the working class may own, control and manage the industries for themselves.  Socialists reason workers will be willing to fight for their complete emancipation from capitalist wage slavery. The only question is: When?

Failing to understand the functions of the state, workers do not know that as long as the capitalist class are in control of it they must put into effect all legislation, and we can be certain that they are not going to legislate to benefit the working class. We, the Impossibilists, have always been charged by them for not being constructive. They were the “practical” socialists. What have they done that is constructive? These “socialists” who were always crying “constructive work” have performed no constructive work themselves. They can point to nothing that they have done that has been of any material benefit to the socialist movement. As for performing any educational work or developing the members of the movement, they have done nothing.

Capitalist Exploitation.

 The essence of the capitalist system is the ownership and control of the materials and tools of production and distribution by a small class whose legal title to the lands, forests, mines, railroads, quarries, mills, factories, and other industrial and commercial utilities and plants gives them control over the lives of the working masses. The workers subsist in a new form of slavery, wherein labour-power is paid for by wages, and the bare chance to live depends upon employment by some capitalist master. Employment depends upon the production by the worker of a margin of value over and above what he receives for his labour-power. The capitalist master has no liability on account of the wage-worker, except that of payment for labour-power on a time or piece basis.

The concentration of ownership and control of the economic resources of the nation in the hands of a few individuals or corporations means even more arbitrary control of the lives of the working masses by a decreasing capitalist class. It means artificial manipulation of production for maximum returns on investment, that is, the attempt to limit production so as to maintain the desired level of prices. Not only lessened production and higher prices result from the very progress of capitalism — by the innate character of the system — but also constantly recurring periods of interrupted production with hundreds of thousands of workers thrown out of their only means of livelihood, the blind, servile victims of a system which response to but one impulse — profit.

If there is anything the capitalist class likes and which it tries to bring about, it is to have the workers resort to armed insurrection methods. Engels’ preface to The Civil War in France, gives the death blow to the advocates of physical force. After pointing out that the development of capitalism had rendered barricade fights and armed insurrection obsolete from the revolutionist’s standpoint; after characterising the revolutionist who would select the working-class districts as the starting point for a violent upheaval as a lunatic; Engels goes on to say: “Does the reader now understand why the ruling class, by hook or by crook, would get us where the rifle pops and the sabre slashes? Why, today, do they charge us with cowardice because we will not, without further ado, get down into the street where we are SURE OF OUR DEFEAT IN ADVANCE? Why are we so persistently importuned to play the role of cannon fodder?”

 The SPGB is opposed to violence or the advocacy of violence in the labour movement because it knows that such tactics are playing right into the hands of the capitalist class. It is not cowardice that dictates the SPGB position but common sense and it is not heroism or bravery that dictates the advocacy of violence by the Workers Party. It is not heroism that makes a fool rock a boat in deep water, it is idiocy. We can go a step further than Engels and say that he who advocates violence today is either a lunatic or a police spy.

The SPGB alone of all the organisations on the political field has a concrete platform, clear, concise, and logical, and it is the only one possible of inaugurating. The SPGB alone points the way to freedom.

What we are striving for is a transformation of the foundations of society, that is, the emancipation of labour.

Understanding the Socialist Party

 

The Socialist Party is made up of socialists who share a unity of agreement on simple generalisations. Note that we are not engaged in a competition with other organisations in a contest to emancipate the workers, because we recognise that the workers are fully capable of emancipating themselves, once they become socialists. Just for the above reasons, it is quite unlikely that there ever would ever be two socialist parties in any one country. The SPGB would have no other alternative but to merge with any other group of real socialist workers appearing on the scene organised for the same purpose as we are. On the other hand, we do oppose all the so-called working-class parties which compromise with capitalism and do not uphold the socialist case. When the workers become socialists, they will not need a vanguard party to lead them. They will organise consciously and politically to emancipate themselves. Its bond of comradeship and unity is rooted in the barest minimum of socialist principles which may be summarised as socialism is a product of social evolution; the socialist revolution is inherently democratic because of its nature of being conscious, majority, and political; and that socialism is based on the social relations of a community of interests between all the members of society and society as a whole. There can hardly be any compromise on these three general principles. Further, a socialist is one who recognises and realises that capitalism can no longer be reformed or administered in the interest of society or of the working class; that capitalism is incapable of eliminating poverty, war, crises, etc.; and that the times call for arousing the majority to become socialists to inaugurate socialism, now possible and necessary.

The Socialist Party is made up of socialists who share a unity of agreement on the above simple generalisations. Note that we are not engaged in a competition with other organisations in a contest to emancipate the workers, because we recognise that the workers are fully capable of emancipating themselves, once they become socialists. Just for the above reasons, it is quite unlikely that there ever would ever be two socialist parties in any one country. We would have no other alternative but to merge with any other group of real socialist workers appearing on the scene organised for the same purpose as we are. On the other hand, we do oppose all the so-called working-class parties which compromise with capitalism and do not uphold the socialist case. When the workers become socialists, they will not need a vanguard party to lead them. They will organise consciously and politically to emancipate themselves.

 The companion parties of the World Socialist Movement can never grow so large that they will not be governed by membership. They delegate administrative and procedural work to committees, but the membership, as a whole, pass on motions of conference dealing with principles and policies (not routine housekeeping matters), which are always submitted to referenda. We don’t have leaders, only spokespersons and administrators.

 

The Socialist Movement

 

It is ridiculous to think of a rivalry between socialist parties competing to emancipate the workers. Should another genuine socialist party appear on the scene, immediate steps would be taken to merge. Herein lies the emphasis on the distinction between “socialist” in quotes and socialist in its scientific, revolutionary context. In fact, the thing that distinguishes the companion parties from all other alleged “socialist” parties is that we stand alone on being organised exclusively for the abolition of capitalism by the workers. Not all socialists are members of the companion parties. There are many, many socialists who are not attached to any socialist party. But this has no bearing on the historic nature of the socialist party. There are innumerable factors to account for individual socialists not being members of a socialist organization, but to focus on this out of its context is only to confuse and confound the understanding of the nature of a socialist party.

 

 There have been ups and downs in membership, enthusiasm, and organisational work. Many of these situations can be traced to personality clashes, personal problems, disappointments leading to discouragement, and the fact that we are all human beings with human failings and limitations. Possibly the biggest factor is that we are few in numbers and turn in on ourselves, instead of outwards in much-needed organisational and propaganda activity. Situations do arise because of emotional stresses and strains. Differences have assumed paramount importance. The objectives of socialism itself are reflected in the very nature of our organisational procedures, in much the same way as the other “socialist” parties’ organisational procedures reflect their concepts of leadership, dictatorship, etc. This is the salient item to bear in mind: there is a justifiable fear of emasculating scientific, socialist principles, based upon the evidence of the real world. Were the doors opened wide to mere sympathisers and well-wishers, or those with non-socialist or even anti-socialist concepts, we would soon cease being a socialist party. Above all else, it is mandatory that a socialist party be made up of socialists.

 

The criterion of what constitutes a socialist is very simple. One does not have to be a Marxian scholar to be a socialist. So much for this, for the present, at least. The interesting thing is how small the memberships of the other so-called revolutionary parties are. It makes shambles of the misconception that the WSM is small because of our procedures. It was not due to lack of activities, intolerance of really unsound, untenable ideas, or any of the favourite criticisms of the WSM; it was not for being “dogmatic and sectarian” that we lost members and influence. This is a historic and social phenomenon. The myriad parties of the Left all have serious declines in membership. Mainly, It can be ascribed to a public apathy that arises when high hopes raised by social reform programs only lead to disillusionment. The “socialist programmes” advocated by the “socialists’ of the Left were incapable of solving the problems confronting society because they never even came to grips with the root causes of those problems. (To do so would require a real socialist analysis.)

 

The appeal of the “socialist programmes” was easily adopted by the liberals and the right, alike. All the “socialist” organisations bemoaning that the capitalists were stealing their programmes only accentuates disgust and apathy with politics and politicians. It has become obvious that such programmes are bankrupt of any accomplishments except winning a chance to administer the status quo. On the other hand, the workers hardly ever hear the socialist case. On those rare occasions whenever they do, it often makes sense to them. A ferment is at work. What used to be nonsense is beginning to make sense. Socialist ideas are rising into view — not so much because of socialist campaigning but because of the lessons of experience. It is notorious indeed that more and more books, more and more articles.