To change the world

 Social revolution is the essential objective of the World Socialist Movement, the end towards which every step it takes must directly tend. It will be an emancipated world, a society of economic and social equals without class divisions or privileges; a system of social ownership of the means of production industrially administered by the workers on an organised and harmonious plan, ensuring from everyone according to one’s capacity and to everybody according to needs, under the motto “All for each and each for All”.

Governments representing capitalists, having strained every nerve to strangle workers’ resistance are now all the more determined to prevent its example from spreading, and are ready to adopt every method to that end, from diplomatic chicanery, false propaganda in the media, schools, pulpit and platform, economic intimidation, hypocritical appeals to patriotism, religious prejudice and racial fear or pride, to the brute force of the mailed fist and the iron heel wherever they dare. Lately, they have instituted a determined campaign all over the world to reduce wages. They are criminally conspiring to maintain as long as they can their decadent, outworn, slave-grinding system with its political expression, as a glance at any day’s news will show, it has not only failed to fulfil a single one of the promises still held out for it but, by crushing the workers with the perpetual dread or actuality of unemployment, starvation, repression, massacre and war, it is driving mankind ever deeper into the abyss. We hold aloft the glistening banner of World Socialism to be when the class war shall have been forever stamped out when mankind shall no longer cower under the bludgeon of the oppressor, when the necessaries and amenities of life, the comfort and the culture, the honour and the power, shall be to all and when none shall be called master and none servant, but all shall be fellow workers in common.

As far as socialists are concerned, states have always been in the pocket of unaccountable business cliques, and have always worked in their interest. Many of the states whose “sovereignty” will be infringed are already corrupt and toadying lackeys to our corporate masters, with despotic elites living the life of Riley out of ill-gotten plunder from environmental despoliation and pillage, wealth almost literally torn from the bodies of the world’s poor.

Some capitalists understand their system better than others or are more honest about it. George Soros, who made fortunes speculating in currency markets, does not regard capitalism as a stable or self-regulating system. In an interview, which has become particularly relevant now, he said: “Markets can move in unexpected ways and become chaotic. I’m afraid that the prevailing view, which is one of extending the market mechanism to all domains, has the potential of destroying society. Unless we review our concept of markets, our understanding of markets, will collapse, because we are creating global markets, global financial markets, without understanding their true nature. We have this false theory that markets, left to their own devices, tend towards equilibrium.” Speaking of market fluctuations, he said that if they become too large, “you can have a breakdown. It will come through political and eventually military events, rather than events merely in the financial markets”.

There are those who are given to the utterly absurd contentions that induce members of the working class to give allegiance to flags and patriotic clap-trap.  In terms of working-class life, it is irrelevant.  History is a sequential process, each chapter being an intermix of the past and the present. People do not take those political decisions that then become history with the freedom of an artist choosing a colour from a palette; on the contrary, though political decisions may be fashioned to serve the dominant economic interests, prevailing ideas handed down from the past play a vital role in the acceptance or rejection of such ideas. If history was simply a reflex of material interests, the matter may have ended there but, as Marx pointed out, while we make our own history, that history is contained to a greater or lesser extent by the dead hand of the past.

The Socialist Party and Ecology

 

The Future Socialist Society

 

Many intellectuals follow academic convention by saying that socialism defies precise definition and then proceed to give emphasis to the policies and actions of Labour, social-democratic and “socialist” organisations and individuals around the world. A common thread uniting many of the self-styled “Socialist” organisations has been a defence of the welfare state, although the idea can be traced back to Thomas Paine who suggested comprehensive welfare benefits to combat poverty in Rights of Man (1791). But the welfare state has also been pursued by non-Socialists and anti-Socialists. For example, in late nineteenth-century Germany, Bismarck introduced a number of welfare measures, such as unemployment insurance, in the belief that he was fighting socialism.

The Socialist Party has a clear definition of socialism; it will be a society of common, not state or private, ownership of the means of wealth production and distribution; there will be democratic and not minority control of social affairs; production will be solely for use rather than for sale or profit; there will be free access by all people to all goods and services, without the fetters of the money economy.

All of that is clear and anyone who cares to go back to 1904 will find all of our literature advocating the same principled and unequivocal socialist aim.

Socialism means a world society based on production solely for use, not profit. 

It will be a class-free society, in which everyone will be able to participate democratically in decisions about the use of the world’s resources, each producing according to their ability and each taking from the common store according to their needs.

In such a society there can be no money – or, more precisely, no need for money. Money is only needed when people possess and most do not.

Imagine that all the things you need are owned and held in common.

There is no need to buy food from anyone–it is common property. There are no rent or mortgages to pay because land and buildings belong to all of us. There is no need to buy anything from any other person because society has done away with the absurd division between the owning minority (the capitalists) and the non-owning majority (the workers).

In a socialist world monetary calculation won’t be necessary.

The alternative to monetary calculation based on exchange-value is calculation based on use-values. Decisions, apart from purely personal ones of preferences or interest, will be made after weighing the real advantages and disadvantages and real costs of alternatives in particular circumstances.

There will be no state in a socialist society. The state is the body which has existed for as long as property society has existed, in order to defend the propertied ruling class against the propertyless majority. Socialism will be without exploiters and exploited, rulers and ruled, coercion and submission. There is no point in having a state unless there are people to be bullied and coerced. Once workers gain control of the state our one simple task will be to abolish both classes and the state by means of the immediate dispossession of the capitalist minority. This will put an end to the class struggle forever. 

The ending of the profit system will mean at the same time the ending of war, economic crises, unemployment, poverty and persecution–all of which are consequences of that system.

The revolutionary change that is needed is not possible unless a majority of people understand and want it. We do not imagine all humankind’s problems can be solved at a stroke.

Reforms of the present system fail because making profits must always be given priority over meeting needs, so the problems keep on recurring and ever-multiplying.

It will take time to eliminate hunger, malnutrition, disease and ignorance from the world. But the enormous liberation of mental and physical energies from the shackles of the profit system will ensure that real human progress is made.

Either society is based on property in which there is buying and selling and a need for money or on propertyless common ownership. The two conditions are mutually exclusive: you can no more have a bit of both than you can be a bit pregnant.

Under a system in which production is freed from the artificial constraints of profit, a system that has expunged the causes of war, a system that can locate people to areas less prone to flooding and drought, poverty and hunger can then be a thing of the past. Socialism could perhaps be brought about with less effort than goes into organising a world food summit and running the myriad of existing aid agencies. It is not some pipe dream anathema to human nature, for what can be more natural than producing for need?

Socialism is Real Social Security

As members of the working class are well aware, it is quite impossible to put a little by for a rainy day, for every day the forecast is a downpour, and trying to keep your head above water is a constant problem.

Our aim is socialism, which we define as a worldwide the society in which the Earth’s resources will be the common heritage of all humanity under democratic control at world, regional and local levels as appropriate. It will be a society where we shall work voluntarily as best we can, as far as our ability goes, to suit our joint needs, as part of a cooperative society. It will be a society in which the state, as the public power of repression at the disposal of a ruling class, will have been abolished and replaced by participatory democracy. This is our immediate aim, not some long-term goal.

In short, we think that given the development of productive capacity since Marx made the distinction in 1875 between a “first” (when full free access according to needs would not be possible) and a “higher” phase of “communist society” (when it would), the so-called higher phase can-and should-be established more or less immediately.

Although we call such a society “socialism” we have no objection to it being called “communism” as long as it is clearly understood that this has nothing to do with the state-capitalist dictatorships that used to exist in Russia and East Europe.

We don’t see ourselves as “the benefactor of the working people”. We are wage and salary workers who don’t see ourselves as a group doing anything for other fellow workers other than putting before them the basic socialist propositions that under capitalism there is an irreconcilable conflict of interest between capitalists and workers; that capitalism can never be reformed so as to work in the interest of workers; that what is required is a society of common ownership, democratic control and production for use, not profit.

If workers want such a socialist society this is something they must do for themselves without following leaders or relying on benefactors. We can’t establish it for them. As we say in our declaration of principles “the emancipation of the working class must be the working of the working class itself”.

We don’t suffer from the illusion that existing MPs and local councillors can do anything to further the cause of socialism. Their job, and in fact aspiration, is merely to run the political side of capitalism in Britain, and capitalism can only be run as a profit system in which priority must always be given to making profits over meeting needs. We also agree that there can be no real democracy under capitalism in the sense of a situation in which everybody has an equal say in deciding what should be done and in which those decisions can be implemented without hindrance. This is not the case today.

Having said this, in many parts of the world including Britain a sufficient degree of democracy exists for a socialist majority to be able to use existing elective bodies, such as parliament, to win control of the state machine through the ballot box. Of course, to work, this presupposes a socialist-minded and democratically organised majority outside parliament standing firmly behind the delegates they will have sent into parliament with the single-mandate to take the formal steps to stop the state from supporting capitalism.

 

We are faced as consumers with an increasingly perplexing range of career decisions, pension plans, healthcare options, educational opportunities and leisure choices. But as electors, the political choice we are provided with appears to be rapidly narrowing down to an infinite number of politicians dancing on the middle-ground. Even Greenpeace and Oxfam have given up on governments, focusing their energies instead on shareholders at AGMs. Is the market system the only way of prioritising what gets produced – or who goes hungry? Is the old communist ideal of production for use just a romantic but Utopian vision? And who cares about globalisation anyway?

Learn what Marxism is

 Many people feel frustrated at having to endure the continuation of capitalism while seeking a mass understanding for socialism. However, the alternative, minority action, would not change things. Without a mandate from a conscious socialist electorate, the minority could only be another government. Socialists in trade unions make their own choices as to voting for officials. They may take political affiliations into account, but the function of trade unions is the limited to of one of seeking better wages and conditions; a candidate for office will be judged for his likely effectiveness as a negotiator above anything else. Socialist Party members in unions do not pay the political levy for the support of the Labour Party.

Political groups and parties which advocate the abolition of capitalism have to be viewed for the validity of their claims. If their policies are not realistic they will not achieve the aim they talk about, and capitalism will continue. While not avowedly in favour of it, they do their bit for it. 

Marx did not argue that the working class must continuously slide into more abysmal conditions. On the contrary, he pointed out that under some circumstances:

"A larger part of their own surplus-product, always increasing and continually transformed into additional capital, comes back to them in the shape of means of payment, so that they can extend the circle of their enjoyments; can make some additions to their consumption-fund of clothes, furniture, etc., and can lay by small reserve-funds of money. But just as little as better clothing, food and treatment, and a larger peculium, do away with the exploitation of the slave, so little do they set aside that of the wage-worker. A rise in the price of labour, as a consequence of accumulation of capital, only means, in fact, that the length and weight of the golden chain the wage-worker has already forged for himself, allow of a relaxation of the tension of it." - Capital

The governing factor is the needs of capitalism:

"The rise of wages therefore is confined within limits that not only leave intact the foundations of the capitalist system, but also secure its reproduction on a progressive scale."

What is the standard of judgement for “worse”? It can only be the potentialities of society. In the same chapter Marx reviews a Budget speech of 1863 in which it was claimed that “the poor have been growing less poor”. He says:

"How lame an anti-climax! If the working-class has remained “poor”, only “less poor” in proportion as it produces for the wealthy class “an intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power”, then it has remained relatively just as poor. If the extremes of poverty have not lessened, they have increased, because the extremes of wealth have. "

 

It will be agreed by SPGB members that they have to spend as much time with enquirers telling them what socialism is not as with telling them what it is. The greatest coup of the capitalist propagandists was when they succeeded in misrepresenting Socialism to the masses. Their allies are those organisations which claim to be socialist or communist, though they are nothing of the sort.

 

Classes are defined by the relationship of their members to the means of production, not by how rich or poor they are. Of course the members of the dominant class are generally rich and the members of the dominated class are generally poor, but this is an effect not the cause of the division of society into classes.

This means that the figures for wealth ownership are only an indication of the class structure of society–they show that society is divided into classes but not how it is. So, classes should not be defined on the basis of them; classes are defined socially not statistically. And the working class is defined socially as those members of capitalist society who are excluded from the ownership and control of the means of production and are therefore forced to get a living by trying to find an employer to buy their labour power.

Most of those called the “middle class” fall into this category, even if they do have savings, since these savings are not sufficient to change their social position. In the vast majority of cases their “investment income” is not going to amount to more than a few thousands pounds a year at most. Nor are we convinced that such people regard themselves as capitalists; they may not call themselves “working class” but this is because of the term’s popular (but mistaken) association with manual labour and not because they don’t regard themselves as working. In fact they get quite irate if you suggest this. On the other hand, as we said in our criticism of Class War, “making a putative middle class into an enemy is as divisive as anything dreamed up by the owning class”.

Have these better off workers some want to call the “middle class” an interest in establishing socialism? Why not? They are exploited in the sense that they produce more value (or save more time) for their employers than they are paid for (this surplus value they produce will also be more than what they get as income on their savings). Like the rest of the working class (properly understood), they suffer from pressures to work harder, stress and job insecurity.

And even if their higher income does allow them to avoid bad housing and hospital queues and dump schools they still suffer from the bad–and worsening–“quality of life” under capitalism: rampant commercialisation, lack of community feeling, social breakdown, decadent values, not to mention pollution and the threat of war.

Immigration

 

Nationalism - A change of masters.

Whether the flag is the Saltire or the Union Jack,  you, as a worker, will in no way be any better off. Your problems will still continue, will still confront you—worrying you and causing you many a headache—while the present system of society lasts. To solve those problems—which never leave you, be you in an independent Scotland, Britain, America or any other part of the world—you’ll most certainly have to struggle. Let your struggle be one against the real origin of your problems, against the system of capitalism, and against those who support it. Struggle against the system which condemns all workers, regardless of the place of their birth or residence, to a life-time of toil and poverty, from cradle to grave; struggle against the wealthy few who, because they own the factories, mines, railways and all of the means and instruments for producing wealth, compel you—because you own nothing—to labour for their benefit.

Your struggle, in common with the struggle of workers everywhere, to be successful must be a revolutionary one. Your aim? To take from the capitalist class its ownership of the means of production and make them the common property of all mankind, without distinction of race or sex. When you’ve achieved that—when you’ve won that revolution — living will really be worthwhile then, it will be a joy and an adventure. Then things will be produced because people need them and not in order to sell for the purpose of making a profit; then poverty will disappear, insecurity vanish, and wars will be nothing but memories.

Our purpose is to show both the “nationalist” worker and “unionist” counterpart, that the struggle “for” or “against” independence does not materially affect his lot as a worker; that the “freedom” much-talked-of on both sides, is but the right of a minority class (the capitalists) to exploit the mass of the people. We would make bold to assert that the real struggle of the workers, in Britain, north and south of the border—as elsewhere in the world— should be against that more evil border that divides the workers from the capitalists.

You depend for your living upon selling your mental and physical abilities to an employer. There exists a constant struggle between you and your employer over your wages and conditions. Never would you dare to think that as wealth is produced from the resources of nature, by the application of human labour-power, it should wholly belong to those who, as a social class, produce it.

In other words, you accept the class ownership of society; you are prepared to let a minority class (the CAPITALISTS) own and control the means whereby you live. As a consequence of their favoured position these Capitalists can live in any part of the world they choose; they can sell, barter, or gamble away, the VERY MEANS WHEREBY YOU LIVE, AND THE NATIONALITY OF THE NEW OWNER IS NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS.

Such an economic set-up makes nonsense of the claims made by nationalists or unionists, that the people can control their own destinies, by raising one flag or lowering another. The problems that beset us in Scotland are problems inherent in the capitalist system.

To us of the working-class, Capitalism means the continuation of all the rotten, miserable conditions under which the mass of the people suffer. No amount of reforming can change the basic nature of the system, and its effects are not mollified by a flag. It matters not which party administers capitalism, whether it is Nationalists, Unionist. Each may apply the screw of policy; bless it, curse it, nationalise or de-centralise; the effects, as far as the working-class are concerned, are the same—poverty, insecurity, slums, ignorance, depressions, and wars.

The Socialist Party affirms that there is but one solution to the problems confronting the working-class; that solution is SOCIALISM. By Socialism we mean the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production (the factories, land, mills, mines, transport, etc.), by, and in the interests of, the whole community, without any distinction whatsoever. No wages system, no exchange, no buying and selling, but instead, the application of the principle; from each according toability; to each according to needs. That is socialism, and the way out for the workers of the world.