To Working People

 

Fellow Workers,

 In view of the recent tragedies around the world, we urge your members to give our case their earnest consideration.

We are Marxists, basing our position on the investigations and conclusions of Marx.

 

Our sole object is the achievement of socialism—a social system in which everything that is on the Earth will be the common possession of all mankind. Everyone will be on an equal footing. There will be no frontiers, no buying and selling, and no privileged groups—except the old, the young, and the infirm.

We hold that capitalism, the system under which goods are produced by the workers for the profit of a relatively small section of owners of the means of production, is now the system that prevails all over the earth; that it breeds wars, slumps, internecine conflicts, and misery for the mass of the people; that there is a constant class struggle going on between the owners of the means of production, and those that operate them—the working class; that all the reforms put forward and fought for by well-meaning people have not touched the fringe of the problem of working class subjection but, instead, though even unintentionally, have pushed further away the day of emancipation; that, so long as the present system prevails there is no remedy for this state of affairs; the only way out is to abolish capitalism and establish socialism in its place; that state-ownership is not socialism, but a particular form of capitalism; that the workers must organise together internationally to attain their freedom from the conditions that oppress and frustrate them.

We are talking about a united working-class and saying (quite correctly) how immensely powerful the working class could be, if only it was united.

“If we all spat we could drown them” Scottish trade unionist Jimmy Reid with his typical working-class directness and humour once said. 

The question, therefore, is why isn’t the working class united? What is it that blinds workers to their class interests, and divides them? A moment’s thought should supply the answer. It is political ignorance.

Many workers do not think they are workers, at all. Many carry on a pathetic struggle to appear “middle- class”, grumbling the while about the “unjust” prosperity of car workers or dockers.

In fact, even to talk about “Unity” at all pre-supposes unity for something—some aim, some goal. Unity in the abstract, for the sake of unity, is meaningless.

Apart from the large number of workers who still think that the boss is their best friend and that they too can become capitalists, there is also a very large number who see the necessity of uniting in trade unions to improve their lot.

 A minority of workers have realised that the problem is not just a question of keeping wages up, but that capitalism is their trouble and its abolition would be emancipation from social problems for everybody, especially the workers, who are on the receiving end. These workers have acquired real class-consciousness, for them it is no longer a question of dockers, miners, or teachers, but the abolition of the wages system. They are revolutionary socialists because it is absurd to propose the abolition of capitalism without a superior alternative. When the anti-socialist says “Yes, but what would you put in its place?” the answer is socialism.

This presupposes the overthrow of capitalism, and we can all agree that the last thing capitalists want is to be abolished (by the way, this does not mean physical extermination; we are talking about social relations). Theoretically, it should be possible to abolish the capitalist class without harming one hair of one capitalist’s head.

Over the years, various people have put forward various ideas for the abolition of capitalism. This has brought disunity, even among those who wanted to abolish capitalism. In other words, even the minority who did oppose capitalism could not agree on the methods to overthrow it. Among the various groups holding opposing ideas was one which came together from a number of splinter groups to form a Communist Party in 1920.

Some of these groups left it again, as soon as they realised more about it. Sylvia Pankhurst and the Workers Socialist Federation refused to follow Moscow and backed out. Some prominent Scottish Workers Committee Movement stalwarts, Tommy Clarke, of the AEU, John Maclean, the first Bolshevik Consul in Britain, did likewise.

Under Russian domination, and blindly following their paymasters, McManus, Gallagher, Bell and Co. they started their wearisome howl for “The United Front”

“The element of success they possess—numbers; but numbers weigh only in the balance, if united by combination and led by knowledge” Marx explained, in the address of the Working Men’s International Association.

The Socialist Party has always held a very clear and straightforward idea about political and industrial action. Political action is that which concerns the whole working class, and industrial action is that of industries or trades. There is no way of getting control of the political machine of government except by voting. Even if a government resigns as a result of a strike, it is still not known how many want something else, and what they positively want. A political party pledged to every one of its understanding members, is necessary for socialism.

This is where we come in. The overthrow of capitalism must be a political act. It must be the united conscious act of a revolutionary working class by some form of election.  It would be well to realise that socialism is the abolition, not the reform of capitalism and that to establish socialism, the workers must vote for it because there is no other way of knowing whether they are united for it or not. If the bondage of capitalism is to be ended and a human society achieved, there must be comprehension of how the fetters are made.

Understanding the Socialist Idea

 

You may have noticed recently that capitalism is heading for another of its periodic crises. Naturally, fears have been expressed about the uncertainty over future prices.

The Socialist Party is no new organisation being born on June 12th, 1904, and it has passed through periods of difficulty and unusual stress and each has left it firmer and more convinced than before. It was a breakaway from the old Social Democratic Federation for the sole purpose of establishing socialism. Unfortunately, there is widespread confusion as to the nature of the socialist society we seek to establish. This is largely due to the obstinate persistence with which parties like the Labour Party and left-wingers describe themselves as socialist. The Party has grown, but not with a mushroom growth, while notwithstanding the comparative smallness of its numbers, its voice has been widely heard—and in no uncertain tone—in the cause of the working class. Numbers, indeed, are never the only essentials to political strength. Our strength is given to us by the logical impregnability of our position. Numbers, in fact, as numbers only, are often a source of weakness, and the disastrous results of seeking numbers first have too often been seen for The Socialist Party to make a similar mistake. The organisation that does not keep numbers and popularity ever subordinate to its early aim becomes easily the tool of self-seekers and its original object becomes entirely lost. The principles of The Socialist Party, and the knowledge and class-consciousness of its members, form the surest guarantee for the Party’s future. 

 

It is certainly necessary to the realisation of our object that numbers be on our side, but only in so far as they help toward that realisation can they be welcomed. The emancipation of labour requires working-class unity, but it can be on none other than a socialist basis since that alone is of any use. And what, it may be asked, do we mean by a socialist basis? In the Declaration of Principles of The Socialist Party the essentials of socialism are, we believe, concisely stated. Assent to these essentials comprises the qualification that can neither be made broader without abandoning socialism nor made narrower without excluding socialists. Hence we are justified in claiming that the principles upon which The Socialist Party is based are those which must be accepted by the mass of the working class before its emancipation can be accomplished.  The seed is being widely sown, and, hastened to ripeness in the forcing house of Capitalism, the reaping of the bounteous harvest of Socialism cannot long be delayed.

Reformers of all kinds have tried to patch up capitalism for 150/200 years without any significant result. Why is this? Because the economic system of capitalism which obtains throughout most of the world is based on the exploitation of a propertyless, deprived working class.

Whatever “improvements” are introduced supposedly for the benefit of the workers, are nullified by the operation of the capitalist system itself. 

Nothing short of the abolition of capitalism, and its replacement by socialism can avail the vast majority — the workers.

The socialist form of society which we propose will be completely different from everything encountered today. In the truly socialist world, members of the community will co-operate voluntarily to produce the best, and freely consume what is then made available. Only this idea as its object makes a party socialist.

The Socialist Party is utterly democratic in its constitution and practice. It holds that society can only be changed by a consciously informed majority who understands what they are about. For this reason, it renounces violent minority direct-action methods, relying on the political consciousness of the majority of the working class.

 

What we can be sure about is that socialism, being a class-free society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of life by the whole community, such minority sectional interests could not possibly prevent the advance of knowledge by censoring the publication of the results of any kind of research. Socialism will be a society of abundance based on developments that are already taking place but which are warped and distorted by capitalism’s profit motive. Given the scientific and technological possibilities plus the human priorities of socialism, we could have a world society of abundance and make a serious start to the big clean-up and rehabilitation of this degraded planet.

The Parable of the Table

 

Nationalist movements are of use only to the capitalists and do nothing but harm to the workers of the world. A united trade union movement acting internationally to further working class interests against all the governments of capitalism and all the employers, everywhere, would achieve something for the workers, which no nationalist movement ever did.

Unable to point to positive benefits to the workers through support of Nationalist movements their propagandists often take refuge in the vague abstraction that movements for national independence are in favour of “freedom” and should therefore receive the approval of "lovers of freedom.” The one freedom the Socialist Party is interested in is the freedom from capitalism, which is opposed by nationalists but even within the framework of capitalism, the identification of nationalism with libertarian ideas is false. 

The Socialist Party, therefore, do not support nationalist movements and does not support the efforts of other capitalist groups to suppress nationalist movements. Instead, Socialists try to induce the workers to recognise their interest in socialism and in the internationalism that goes with it, in opposition to capitalism and its tool, nationalism.

Does the Socialist Party support self-determination? As the term is used now, they do not. Self-determination now means freedom for the workers to decide which group of capitalists will exploit them. Socialists stand for a world in which there will be no exploitation, and in which, as a result, there will be no artificial division of the world into competing and warring states. No group will use war or terrorism as a means to gain independence, for not only will every country be independent, every individual will be independent too. There will be no foreigners under socialism. The human beings of the world will freely participate in one voluntary society because that way will they best satisfy their needs.

Despite the passing decades, there is much truth in the speech of Gustave Hervé, a French anti-militarist gave at his 1905 trial. Tragically, Herve later reneged on his principles and transformed into a fervent patriot.

 

“...Ah! I know that I wound your conscience, gentlemen of the jury. Your conscience pricks you all the more because you feel that I am speaking the truth. I feel sure that when I say this I wound the universal conscience which the Paris Bar with its eloquence, knows so well how to interpret.

But do you believe that Voltaire, Diderot and the rest of the encyclopaedists were able to avoid treading on people’s corns?

It is a lamentable fact that every time a new form of society is about to come forth from the womb of one on the point of death, it always does so by a long and painful child-birth, producing in every family, and in every heart, trouble and anguish; suffering that every innovator would fain spare those whose convictions he hurts.

As for us revolutionary Socialists, we have discarded the folds of this flag on which the names of so many deeds of butchery are displayed in letters of gold.

Flags are but emblems; and are worth something only in so far as they represent something worthy. What, after all, is one’s native country? Or what, in actual fact, do all these “fatherlands” consist?

Allow me, if you please, gentlemen of the jury, to draw for you a mental picture, to speak if I may a kind of parable, which will the better help you to understand what our feelings are. One’s native land, every country, no matter under what form of government it be masked, is made up of two groups of men, consisting on the one hand of a quite small number, on the other including the immense majority of people.

The first of these is seated round a well furnished table where nothing is lacking. At the head of this table, in the seat of honour, you find the great financiers; some, perhaps, are Jews, others Catholics or Protestants, or it may be even Freethinkers. It is possible for them to be in entire disagreement on questions of religion or philosophy, and even on questions affecting their individual interests, but as against the mass of the people, they are as thick as thieves.

Seated on their right and left hand you have Cabinet Ministers, high officials of every department of civil, religious or military administration. Paymasters-general with salaries of 30, 40, and 60 thousand francs a year: a little further off fully fledged barristers, by their unanimity glorious interpreters of the “Universal Conscience” – the whole Bench and Bar, not forgetting their precious assistants, the solicitors, notaries and ushers.

Large shareholders in mines, factories, railways, steamship companies and big shops: manorial magnates, big landed proprietors; all are seated at this table: everybody that has two-pence is there too, but at the foot. These latter are the small fry, who have for that matter, all the prejudices, all the conservative instincts, of the big capitalists.

Ah! gentlemen of the jury, I wish that you may be of the number of these privileged ones seated around this festive board. Verily, you are not so badly off there, after all, you know. In return for a little work – when you have any work at all – work I say which is oft-times intelligent, occasionally agreeable, which always leaves you with some spare time for yourself, directive work that flatters your pride and vanity – in return for this you can enjoy a life of plenty, made pleasant by every comfort, every luxury that the progress of science has placed at the service of Fortune’s favoured ones.

Far from the table I see a great herd of beasts of burden doomed to repulsive, squalid, dangerous, unintelligent toil, without truce or rest, and above all without security for the morrow; petty shop-keepers chained to their counters, Sundays and holidays, more and more crushed by the competition of the big shops; small industrial employers, ground down by the competition of the big factory owners; small peasant proprietors, brutalised by a sixteen to eighteen hours day, who only toil that they may enrich the big middlemen: millers, wine factors, sugar refiners. At a still greater distance from this table of the happy ones of this world, I see the crowd of proletarians who have but their strength of arm or their brain for sole fortune, factory hands, men and women exposed to long periods of unemployment, petty officials and shop-assistants forced to bow and scrape and hide their opinions, domestic servants of both sexes, labouring flesh, cannon fodder, matériel of “pleasure”.

There are your beloved countries! Your country to-day is made up of this monstrous social inequality, this horrible exploitation of man by man.

When the proletarians doff their hats to the flag as it passes by, it is to this that they uncover. They in effect say:

 

“What a splendid country is ours! How free, kind and just is she!
How! how you must laugh, Mr. Attorney-General, when you hear them sing:

“ah! glorious is death indeed,
When for our native land – for liberty – we bleed!”

 

The Marxist Internet Archives offer an alternative translation.

Anti-patriotism by Gustave Herve 1905 (marxists.org)

 

A New Epoch Without A Master Class

 A new world can only come into being by making the means of life common property. This our masters will not do for such a move means their end as the ruling class. Nevertheless, our lords and masters are compelled by circumstances over which they have no control to liberate economic and social forces that move inexorably in the direction of common ownership.

WELCOME TO WAGE SLAVERY

After a few more years of wars the peoples of the earth may look at capitalism with the eyes of understanding. As soon as the source of exploitation is made plain to the working class in general, it will be eliminated. Our task is to explain and keep in tune with the forces making for socialism. The capitalist class are caught in the cleft of the class struggle. If they refuse to make the means of life common property and do not allow the establishment of a system of production solely for use, they will be ruthlessly thrust aside by the forces their own system has engendered. Society, in this respect resembling an organism, will struggle to maintain its existence. Society must eliminate capitalism or capitalism will eliminate society. Let us work unceasingly until the working class declare socialism without equivocation and do away with the cause of war, poverty, slavery and the class struggle. Capitalism has nothing within it for the working class.

Capitalism is based on the concentration in the hands of a tiny minority of the population of the ownership of the means of production. These function as capital for them in the sense of providing them with an unearned income. The source of this unearned income that accrues to capital is the labour of those who operate the means of production and actually produce wealth.

Ownership of capital, in other words, confers the right to appropriate a part of the new wealth that is being produced every day. Most of this new wealth—around 80 percent in fact—is used as means of consumption, by workers from their wages and salaries, by capitalists from their rent, interest and dividends, and by the state from the taxes, it levies. The rest, under the spur of competition between capitalist firms to maximise profits, is accumulated as means of production, as further capital to yield an unearned income for their owners. This accumulation of capital out of profits produced by those who operate the means of production is what capitalism is all about. Capitalism is an economic system under which means of production are accumulated in the form of profit-yielding capital.

In concrete terms what this means is that the stock both of physical means of production (factories, machinery, plant, materials, etc) and of its monetary form, capital, grows over time. This is by no means a steady process—it is halted and even reversed from time to time, as in wars (when wealth is physically destroyed) and in slumps (when the same thing happens and when the value of the rest falls)—but the long term trend is upward. This must mean that in the long run those who own the means of production—the rich—get to own more means of production, more capital, i. e. get richer.

The contention of the Socialist Party that the whole working class is sweated is amply proved by the evidence of even our opponents. Under capitalism the working class are poor. Some get a “fair” wage and are poor; some get a sweated wage and are poor ; others are unemployed and get no wage at all. They are all poor. What, after all, is a fair wage? The Socialist Party is the only Party which at its formation and ever since has declined to side-track the working class by advocating palliatives.

There are but two classes in society—the producers of wealth and the master class. If by a trade union or any other effort the working class succeed in securing a larger share of the product of their labour, it must necessarily be at the expense of the master class. Competition among the latter compels them to be always on the lookout for means whereby the cost of production may be reduced and profits increased. “Concessions” wrung from them by the organised working class stimulate them in their efforts. As a result, old machinery is scrapped or improved, and new technology introduced. Under the new conditions, fewer workers are required, and so many are discharged altogether or put on short time. Thus we see the limitations of working-class effort under capitalism, so long as that effort is only directed to palliating the evils of the system, to making it more bearable for the wage-workers.

The revolution will not be accomplished by words: it needs organisation and action, and step by step as the workers become convinced of the soundness of socialism they must be enrolled within the ranks of a militant organisation so that the mustering of forces and the training of men may go steadily forward for the capture of the political and industrial machinery of the world for the workers.

 

Power to the People

 “Nationalism of one kind or another was the cause of most of the genocide of the twentieth century. Flags are bits of colored cloth that governments use first to shrink-wrap people’s brains and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead.” - Arundhati Roy

Many, many times, the Socialist Party has been asked to join in support of Scottish independence. Our reply in refusing to do so has always been that not only would such support result in our being side-tracked from our work of socialist propaganda but that the aims and results of the Scottish nationalist movement at best were concerned with pushing forward the local and nascent ruling interests and at worst could be and usually were actively anti-working class. We have not been afraid to point out, too, that the independence movement which speak so much of “freedom," “independence,” “liberty,” etc., were they to come to power and were they to find unwelcome opposition or criticism, would not hesitate to act in the same despotic and dictatorial manner against which they were the erstwhile protesters.

What is socialism without a country? People should have their national home before they become socialists we are told. The Socialist Party stand for a united world society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the resources of the Earth by all the people who live in it. The Socialist Party aim to create a united world free from all national divisions. As socialists we’d like to end nations, not to create new ones.

The future of society rests with the world working class. If they want to, they can make a world of peace and happiness, in which men and women can live in freedom. This is more than a dream; it could so easily become reality. The Socialist Party does not stand aside from the struggles of nationalism. These struggles are a potent force for the delusion of workers, for the promotion of divisive, anti-working class theories, for the diversion from the essential object of the establishment of socialism. So we cannot stand aside from them; we must expose their basic fallacy, we must be undyingly hostile to them and we must strive to replace their theories with the idea of the united, co-operative world of socialism.

What then has independence done for people? Without going into details we can say that national independence is good for local politicians and business men. It opens up careers and money-making opportunities for them.  National differences are fostered by the capitalists for their own ends, based ultimately on the pursuit of profit and power by the minority capitalist class. The only way out of this impasse is that workers to join together for the socialist objective of overthrowing capitalism and establishing socialism. When will workers learn that the only liberation that counts is from the wage slavery of capitalism?

We stand for a society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means of wealth production and distribution. In this society wealth will be produced for use instead of for profit; it will be freely available to everyone instead of for sale to those who can afford it. It will be a society in which all human beings will be together with the single aim of making life as abundant, free and pleasurable as possible. There will be one people, working together for one object.

In socialism, the national divisions of capitalism will fade into history. From the experience and the learning will come the free world—peaceful, abundant and united.

 

 “You the people have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness. You the people have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then in the name of democracy let us use that power – let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give youth a future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie. They do not fulfil their promise, they never will. Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people. Now let us fight to fulfil that promise. Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness.” - Charlie Chaplin