What Socialism Really Means

 

A socialist must not only be one who understands socialism and believes in it: he must be one who wants socialism. Fellow workers, the only remedy for your precarious and poverty-stricken condition is to be found in intelligent recognition of your class position. You must recognise that you are mere cogs in the industrial machine, that you are permitted to work only so long as there is profit to be derived from your labour. You must understand what you want and how to get it; then there will be no room for labour "leaders." You would not need to be led. and you could not be misled. You must organise inside the Socialist Party, and work consciously for that revolution which will replace poverty and misery for those who do the world's work with plenty for all.

The working class, having learnt that capitalist exploitation is the source of their social evils and their enslavement, will seek to emancipate themselves and solve their social problems by the abolition of capitalism through the establishment of socialism. The essential factor is the education of the workers in the principles of socialism, for on the “rank and file” rests the responsibility of a “leader’s" shortcomings.

The Socialist Party knows that reforms or measures palliative of capitalism can only be obtained while the master class rules in so far as capitalist interests are thereby served; and since capitalist interests are directly opposed to those of workers in all essential points of wealth and leisure, it is obvious that the measures passed by capitalist representatives will have for object the maintenance or extension of their system or the intensification of the robbery of the workers upon which they depend. It is then a fraud for a candidate to pretend to be able to obtain measures in the workers’ interests from the capitalist class in power. The workers can get nothing of their own until they are able to take it. No man is a socialist who throws out such fraudulent sops or promises as bait to prospective voters, for besides that it must lead workers to disappointment and apathy and aid their enemies, it is obvious that as far as sops or promises are concerned the master class can, and does when it needs to, always out-sop the would-be member. Hence it is of supreme importance that the workers rely upon themselves and concentrate all their energies on the capture of political power for socialism, for all else is an illusion.

The socialist proposition begins at the point when you recognise that capitalism must go and the earth must belong to its inhabitants. Socialism has nothing to do with regulating capitalism or equalising social relations within it, or injecting illusory feelings of cooperation into it, or moulding or reforming it in any way. Socialism is not a process of playing with the surface image of the profit system. We are uncompromising enemies of the capitalist system. While it exists, in whatever form, we fight against it. Socialists are not alone in this fight. Capitalism necessitates class struggle between capitalists and workers. The two classes have opposed interests and live in a condition of permanent tension which frequently erupts into class war in various forms. The difference between the socialist struggle and that of our fellow workers who are not yet socialists is that we know what we are fighting against and what we are fighting for. Too often workers struggle in the dark; they hate the boss, they seek justice, they place faith in reform schemes or other illusions. To become a socialist is to see through the dark and convert blind struggle into a movement for social revolution. The socialist proposition commences, then, at the point of seeing the need for fundamental social change; it proceeds to consciously prepare for revolution. That is the socialist task. The socialist revolution will not be an affair between leaders and the led. 

 Workers will not be led into socialist liberation. We shall not, as a class, be told by leaders that they have very kindly emancipated us from capitalism and now we may cheer like grateful masses for being freed. Workers will not be freed but must free ourselves. To quote Marx. "The emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class themselves". The revolutionaries who make the revolution will know what we are doing. That is why the first prerequisite for the socialist revolution is the consciousness of what needs to be done.

As the working class is the majority, and as there will be no socialism without a socialist-conscious working class, it follows logically that the revolution must be the act of the majority, not the minority. In short, it must be democratic. As socialism itself will be the most democratic form of society ever experienced by humankind, it follows that it can only be established democratically. A minority could not establish socialism in the face of a non-socialist majority of workers, and it would be folly to attempt such an adventure.

Once there is a socialist majority political action must be taken. The socialist revolution cannot be non-political. Why? Because we are up against the capitalist state and if we do not take it, it will take us. The power of coercion cannot be left in the hands of the capitalist class. The government and the armed forces must be taken away from them in the same way as they are handed over to them: by mandate. At present workers vote the power to rule over them to our class enemies every time there is an election. In the ballot box workers throw away their chance to be rulers over their own lives, offering such power to those who seek to govern on behalf of the bosses. The socialist never votes for anyone to rule over him or her, and never votes for any capitalist party, even if it poses as "the lesser evil". The socialist vote is a class-conscious vote which is cast in opposition to the capitalist state in any form. This does not mean that we seek to establish a socialist state. On the contrary, the socialist revolution. in establishing workers' power over the state, will at the same time, put an end to the state. The state is an instrument of class coercion: where there are no classes there will be no state. The socialist revolution will bring about a state-free society.

The working class is not a national class but exists worldwide. Our interests internationally are not many, but identical. Workers everywhere are robbed of the fruits of our labour and only by revolution everywhere can the world become the property of all — or, more accurately, the property of no one. So, the socialist revolution knows no boundaries; it will not occur nationally, but internationally.

 That is why the Socialist Party is not concerned only with the workers of one state territory.  It is up to socialists in each area of world capitalism to struggle for revolution in whatever way is best for them. To face up to that obligation and join the Socialist Party is the most historically intelligent and dignified act that you could take. The movement for revolution demands your consideration and support.

Bill Martin (video clip)

 

The Socialist Party and Socialism

 

The Socialist Party maintains that as the enslavement of the working class follows from the ownership of the means of living by the capitalist class the interests of the working class can only be served by the establishment of socialism. A system of society based upon common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interests of the whole community. For world socialists, socialism means a money-free, wageless, class-free and stateless society.  Socialism is a world society with no production for sale, money, buying and selling, prices, wages, or profit.

 The Socialist Party reject all forms of minority action to attempt to establish socialism, which can only be established by the working class when the immense majority have come to want and understand it. Without a socialist working class, there can be no socialism. The establishment of socialism can only be the conscious majority, and therefore democratic, the act of a socialist-minded working class. If we use terms such as “majority” this is not because we are obsessed with counting the number of individual socialists, but to show that we reject minority action to try to establish socialism – the majority as the opposite of the minority. Socialism can only be established when through the experience of capitalism, including hearing the case for socialism (itself the distilled past experience of the working class), a majority (yes, but in the democratic rather than mere mathematical sense) have come to want it. 

This vicious system that we live under has not always been, and it need not continue. But before it can be superseded by socialism, which is a system of society based upon the common ownership of the means of life, socialism must be understood and desired by the workers generally.

To agitate for the reform of a system which has such a basis as the capitalist system has, to endeavour to palliate its inevitably harsh bearing upon those who possess nothing, is a waste of energy and time. Worse than that, the struggle for reform obscures the main issue. One thing, and one thing only, will change for the better the condition of the workers generally, and that is the OVERTHROW OF CAPITALISM and its supersession by socialism.

The abolition of capitalism and the inception of socialism is a work that necessitates knowledge of the system now obtaining, of the system that can replace it, and of the necessary work that shall make socialism an accomplished fact. To gain this knowledge the workers must think for themselves. Socialism will not come until it is generally understood and desired.  Our position always has been that Socialism essentially includes democracy—the genuine thing, not the pitiful caricature some confusionist lips and pens love to portray. We have always held, as one of the primary tenets of our political faith, that a knowledge of the principles of socialism, even together with an avowal of acceptance thereof, is not of itself sufficient to make a person a socialist. Something more, we have maintained, is required.

The surest way for such a socialist majority to gain control of political power in order to establish socialism is to use the existing electoral machinery to send a majority of mandated socialist delegates to the various parliaments of the world. This is why we advocate using Parliament; not to try to reform capitalism (the only way Parliaments have been used up till now, which has inevitably failed to do anything for the working class since capitalism simply cannot be reformed to work for their benefit), but for the single revolutionary purpose of abolishing capitalism and establishing socialism by converting the means of production and distribution into the common property of the whole of society.  At the same time, the working class will also have organised itself, at the various places of work, in order to keep production going, but nothing can be done here until the machinery of coercion which is the state has been taken out of the hands of the capitalist class by political action.

Socialists distinguish between society and the state. In their view, the State, as a coercive instrument, only flourished in class societies and was the instrument whereby a ruling class controlled society. In the class-free society of the future, there would be no coercive government machine, and central control would be purely administrative. Unfortunately, many people, including some who called themselves socialists, overlooked this distinction between society and the state.

Carl Sagan on Religion (video)

 

The Only Choice is Socialism

 

There is no way out for workers within the framework of capitalism. Struggle as they may to improve their conditions. Poverty is a cancerous growth that has shattered the lives of workers. It is no use looking towards  the capitalist class to solve your problems. If they could abolish poverty, they would lose their privileged position, power and prestige. The result of class ownership of the means of production is but the appropriation of the unpaid labour of the workers. And because every ruling class seeks to further its own class interests the capitalist will never distribute the profits thus made among the workers. This would mean to forego class monopoly and privilege. Humane slave masters cannot abolish slavery.

Capitalism is a system of society in which the majority, the working class, are alienated from ownership and control of the means of production and distribution; a system in which these means of production are used not for the provision of the needs of people but rather for the production of commodities for the market in order to ensure profit, in one form or another, to those owning and/or controlling the means of production. In carrying out its profit-making function capitalism operates through the medium of the money system, imposing on the working class the need to work for wages, which in turn produces their servile status and puts the seal on the permanence of their poverty.

Our class produces all wealth but because the capitalist class, either directly or through the medium of the state, have title to the ownership of the tools of production and the resources of nature, such wealth as we produce has to be left with our employers and we receive in the form of wages more or less sufficient to maintain us in a working class condition of life between pay-days. It is in the fact that the working class are obliged in order to live to sell their physical and mental skills that their exploitation arises and it is from the same condition that all profit, rent and interest, or, as we call it, surplus value, arises to maintain a parasitic class in power and privilege. But the problem doesn’t end there, for in order to maintain this condition we must accept the whole stultifying apparatus of the money system with its organised waste and inability to exploit the abundant potential of the world for the benefit of mankind.

When we speak of socialism we do not mean state capitalism. What, then, do we mean? We mean by socialism a world-wide system of society in which there would be neither an owning class nor a working class. All the means for producing and distributing wealth would be owned in common by all members of society and would be used solely for the purpose of providing the needs of everyone in society. As it is now, wealth would be produced by social labour, except that social labour would no longer be provided by a subject class of producers but by the whole of society and the division of labour peculiar to capitalism, with its market economy, its buying and selling, money and wages structure, would no longer obtain.

All of our class who are presently engaged in occupations made necessary only by capitalism and its money system would be freed from such activities and would be available to apply their skills and energies to the task of producing an abundance of all the things we need to form the material basis of a full and happy life. It is worth considering just how many wasteful and useless functions capitalism and its market economy imposes on us. Sales people in shops and stores, sales representatives — their number can be judged by the fact that they are responsible for burning up almost half the petrol used by private transport — bank clerks, insurance operators, advertising and marketing men, tick men, ticket collectors — if you had the time and plenty of ink in your pen you could continue the list indefinitely.

You could add armies, navies, air and “security” forces, just as you could deduct from humanity’s bill of needs the tremendous wealth in the form of armaments that these grotesque organisations of class society need to maintain them even when they are not engaged in the destructive activities for which they exist.

Obviously, then, in socialism, there will be no shortage of hands with which to perform the work of producing an abundance for all. This is what socialists mean when they say that in socialism “each will contribute in accordance with his or her mental or physical ability.”

We also say that, in socialism, “Each will take in accordance with their needs.” What we mean is just that! Every member of society will have the right to freely avail himself of such things as he may need. Just as each member of society has contributed to the task of producing the things we require so now, without money, checking, or any of capitalism measurements of poverty, each will take what he needs.

This, then, is what we mean by socialism; not the attempt to facilitate the further development and smooth functioning of capitalism by state controls, not the notion that some of the worst features of the system can be curbed by the state and certainly not the patently absurd idea that workers in one country can elect to power a political party — any political party — that can legislate in such a way as to protect workers in that country. Capitalism is a world system and workers in one country cannot create a national oasis of economic sanity in such a world. Indeed, in this latter idea, the nonsense of a “workers’ republic”, there are dangerous pit-falls. Experience has shown that, where the attempt has been made, the state controls made necessary to impose disciplines on workers, frustrated by the limitations of capitalism’s wages system and the continuance within the so-called “workers’ republic” of all the old failed features of capitalism, has only resulted in the further mortgaging of that very freedom of political action that represents the one avenue to socialism and freedom.

Tragically for the working class, most of its alleged friends on the so-called “left” make the struggle for even their limited vision of socialism seem insurmountably difficult. They will point to the tremendous power of the capitalist state with its standing army and sophisticated devices for delivering death. “How can you beat that peacefully?” they cry, and they proceed to tell us that socialism can only be introduced by violence! These ignorant vapourings may sound much more romantic than the hard-plugging and slogging needed to make workers socialists but they are dangerous beyond measure. The absurdity of the proposition stands clear: the state machine has at its disposal these tremendous means of destruction of those who oppose it, so the workers should collect some old weapons, stones, petrol bombs, rifles and machine guns and declare war on the state!

This is further exposed when its exponents develop their case in the light of our rebuttal. Then, it transpires, we will win a majority in arms. The question we must ask is “Win a majority for what”. To introduce socialism or to prosecute a “glorious” struggle. Obviously, if it is to introduce socialism as we understand it, it follows, and logically follows, that that majority will have to be conscious socialists; that is to say, they will have to be people who understand what socialism is and what will be expected of them in the way of effort — and, no doubt in the early stages, self-discipline — in a socialist society.

What then becomes obvious is the fact that the power of the state, with all its means of violence and intimidation, emanates from the overwhelming support of the majority of the working class today. It is the working class who, by voting for political parties whose policies are based on the maintenance of capitalism and its necessarily coercive state apparatus, that keeps the state in being.

If the working class, armed with socialist knowledge, wanted — as of course they would — to elect representatives to the state legislature for the purpose of making the productive resources the common property of all and dismantling all the restrictive and destructive machinery of capitalism’s wages and money system, what power is there to stop them? Certainly violence waged directly by the tiny minority that would have an economic interest in prolonging capitalism is unlikely indeed. But if the question of violence is to be posed hypothetically then we would say that this is the only context in which we could accept it: when the majority of the working class have consciously opted for socialism and an undemocratic minority of capitalists and their hangers-on (and we would have to allow that they had suicidal tendencies) took to arms to frustrate the will of the majority.

Obey (video)

 A scene from John Carpenter’s They Live (1988).  While it’s true John Carpenter was/is against only free-market-capitalism, this film can very easily be interpreted as anti-capitalism. 

Full film at https://youtu.be/KpTlUhvD7Qc

WORKERS, AWAKEN FROM YOUR SLUMBERS

 

Our socialist case, which no one else is putting, is that in a world of plenty there is poverty, that a society which puts ironmongery into space cannot house people decently, that workers are debased and degraded in useless toil, that our species is threatened with extermination because of capitalist economic conflict — and that all this is absolutely unnecessary for a single day longer.

A world social democracy without frontiers, in which work will be voluntary and enjoyable, in which every member of our society will have equal access to all goods and services, in which poverty and war will not exist — this free society is technically feasible now and can be established as soon as the majority of people understand and desire it.

The history of the last hundred years has proved time and time again: reformist programmes do not lead the working class to socialism. They obscure the issue. What is needed is a clear-cut case, uncluttered and uncompromised, for the abolition of wages. The Socialist Party declares that the workers have it in their power to build a society wherein the wealth produced shall be freely available to everyone without the need to buy, sell or exchange everything that is required.

So under the present system money is used to buy and sell commodities. All wealth has a price once it has become a commodity, and people cannot live without wealth. Our access to wealth is determined by our access to money. There are three was of obtaining money under capitalism:

1. Criminal Theft. This embraces illegal acts like robbing banks, mugging, begging on the streets and defrauding the benefits system. The risk involved is that the state is there to ensure that property is defended against suckers like working class criminals and those who defy the defence of capitalist social relations can be locked up, beaten or killed.
2. Legalised Theft. You will run into no trouble with the state here. The theft that is essential to the continuation of capitalism is exploitation (paying the worker less than the value of what he produces) which in polite circles is known as “running a business profitably”. Large fortunes can be made in this way, but before the reader becomes too attracted to this option it should be pointed out that entry to the class of legalised robbers is only available to a small minority of the earth’s inhabitants, usually by inheritance.
3. But if prisons or profits are not for you, there is a third way of getting money. All you have to do is to sell yourself to a capitalist in return for just enough money to keep you coming back the following week in need of more money. This is wage slavery and it is the position of the vast majority of men and women today. 

The money we get in return for producing ail of the wealth in society is enough to buy cheap and shoddy goods. Meanwhile, those who own and control the means of producing and distributing wealth —the ones we are producing surplus value to provide for—are able to live in comfort, security and privilege.

Imagine a money-free society where all goods are available according to individuals’ self-determined needs. Will people take more than they need when they know that wealth will be there for the taking whenever they want it? It would be foolish for someone in a society of free access to take twenty loaves of bread when they need only one the others will soon be stale. Who will want to eat all twenty loaves simply because they are free? When did you last see a person filling their lungs with excess air or his mouth with more water than they could drink because these things are free? And if you did encounter such a person, would you resent the greed or laugh at the stupidity? The wretched theologians and psychologists, their minds contaminated by the conditioned behaviour of property society, ignorantly conclude that always men must act as anti-socially as we are forced to now. It is not “human nature” that stands in the way of a money-free society, but human consent to the continuation of private property.

When the majority class of wage slaves get rid of the institution of property, money will have no more use than tram lines in a tramless city or gas lamps in an age of electricity. Exchange will have no meaning when there are no property rights to pass from one person to another. Just as you cannot sell your coat to yourself, so, when the community commonly owns and democratically controls the means of producing and distributing wealth, there will be no non-owners to buy things from or sell things to, to steal from or to give to. Wages will be replaced by co-operative labour; classes will be replaced by social equality; money will be replaced by free access to all wealth. The richness and beauty of the world is there for the taking; are you ready to claim it?

Where have all the flowers gone (music)

 

We war against capitalism

 

Most people nowadays have some grievance with this or that aspect of society. 

We of the Socialist Party are men and women who belong to the working class; we share the same experiences of exploitation and fear of economic insecurity; we know what all this means because we live the part. But we claim to have studied the problems of the workers' lives at their foundation. As a result, we are able to declare unhesitatingly that the solution has been found. We know, and can prove our case, that the wealth of the world is produced by the workers. We know, and can prove it, that what the workers can do so efficiently for the capitalist class they can do even more effectively for themselves.

It is time to fight against robbery. The battle need not be wasted on those poor wretches who rob in order to feed their kids. Nor need we waste time on those workers whose robbery of other workers is anti-social and foolish, but only a reflection of their poverty and lack of hope. The war against robbery must begin and end with the system which allows the rich to prosper in privilege and affluence by robbing the vast majority of us.

The workers of all lands are wage slaves. They have the same miserable lot, of whatever nationality they may be. They have one common foe—the capitalist class the world over. 

We are out for the abolition of the wage system—the result of the private ownership of the means of life. We want the workers to grip the fact that it is just this— the way in which these means are used against our class by our exploiters—that causes all the misery.

We desire the overthrow of the capitalist system and in its place the establishment of socialism. Then production for the use of all will take the place of the pernicious production for the profit of a few, and a new and splendid era will open up for humankind.

We stand for the working-class capture of political power by the only method available to-day, namely, through democratic election to parliament to abolish capitalism and establish socialism. This is the first and foremost plank in our programme; anything short of this will not do. We neither advocate nor ask capitalist governments for social reforms. The Socialist Party rejects nationalisation as a solution to workers’ problems. We insist on the abolition of wages.

We picture a world free from exploitation and want, free from wars and the power of dictators—in short, a world of our own making in which the guiding principle would be the common interest of “ associated humanity." This is no wild Utopian dream. The material conditions of its realisation are here now, awaiting the understanding and action of the international working class.

We want the abolition of the system causing class division. We desire the speedy overthrow of the bloody system that is built up out working-class slavery and exploitation. A socialist society will do away with commodity production and will produce solely for use. This means that buying and selling will no longer take place and money will be obsolete. In a system based on free access to goods and services, members of the community will not need to purchase from themselves the wealth which they already possess. Along with all other commodities, human labour power will be abolished as an item of sale: the abolition of the wages system will give way to a society of cooperative labour where each will give according to ability and take according to need.

What do we say? Don’t follow anyone, and don’t believe anyone who offers you paradise—plus a wage. Don’t expect us to lead you. Instead, cultivate your self-reliance and organise yourselves democratically (and that means equal participation in decision- and policy-making, with all tasks not assumed by leaders but delegates) for the conquest of political power. When you have political power as a class, you will be the last class in history to be emancipated. There are none below you, none you will need to dominate to maintain your position as free men and women at last.

Voluntary cooperation on a world scale will replace compulsory economic competition between individuals. Social antagonisms will fade into history. With the abolition of the wage system, the interests of the individual will coincide with those of society. Genuine freedom will have dawned.

The Picket Line (music)

 In these times of strikes, this song is appropriate.