A New Human Horizon

 

The market works. But just not for us. It works for the handful of people who own industry or land. Most of them are doing well and getting richer. For them, the present system works, through our hard work.

For us, the workers, it doesn’t. The real value of wages has shrunk. Housing is becoming more unaffordable for many, rents are rising and benefits are being cut. Unemployment is at staggering proportions, especially among young people.

The truth is being revealed across the world: that the system is run in the interests of those who own it. For governments, repaying debts to those who got wealthy from our work is more important than us receiving education or health care.

For us, the future won’t work so long as we depend on an economy based on the market with private or state ownership of the means of living.

In our workplaces we co-operate. We don’t charge our colleagues for our time: we work together. It’s just that we work together for our employers. If we owned the land and all the places of work ourselves, we could work together to make all the things we need, without buying and selling and without an employing class.

The alternative is voting for parties that support the market system: parties that inevitably have to accept the existence of poverty and unemployment.

While we build a movement to bring about a better future, it’s important that we use trade unions to defend ourselves and get the best deal we possibly can under the present system. We must ensure democratic control of trade unions, and not follow charlatans and adventurers to glorious defeat. We should rely on ourselves, not leaders.

If we want to transcend the defensive position forced upon us by the pressures of the profit system then a vision beyond capitalism has to be on the agenda.

That future we call socialism, a future where we would have common and democratic ownership of the resources of the world. A future that will work if the majority of us want it and are prepared to work for it using democratic struggle to create a world of common wealth.

The monster of war has raised its ugly head again, and once more the workers have been called upon to take up arms and risk their lives in their masters’ quarrels. The usual flimsy pretexts are broadcast.  The Western Powers claim to be concerned to defeat the pernicious intrigues of Russia.  It is an old oft-repeated story; littered with indecision, broken promises, duplicity and intrigues. So it will continue until those who do the work of the world realise that only when privilege in all forms, and class ownership of the means of living, have been abolished will it be possible for the people of the world to give in harmony.

The hypocritical blustering of the warmongers is matched by the feeble and contradictory protests of the alleged anti-war and peace committees. The rival slogans of “national sovereignty,” “international rights,” “restoring peace,” etc., only thinly disguised the sordid motives of the different ruling class groups. War is caused by commercial rivalries that are necessarily engendered by world capitalism. Each country builds up armed forces to maintain its position in the capitalist world, and no group which believes it has a vital interest at stake will be deterred from using its armed forces by United Nations resolutions. Capitalism is an exploiting system under which the workers—the mass of the population—produce the goods that are sold to provide the profit out of which the owners of the means of production and distribution accumulate their riches. Profit, the surplus left over after the expenses of production and distribution have been met, is the mainspring of the system. In order to obtain this profit goods have to be sold at home and abroad. This necessitates markets, trade routes and sources of supply. It is over these that capitalists quarrel and finally plunge into war. So it is today. All this points to the necessity of international working-class action to abolish the cause of war. Unfortunately, the workers are still at loggerheads internationally and are prey to all sorts of emotional upsurges that do not bring them any fundamental relief. They will only unite when they understand the cause of and remedy for war as well as for the other evils they suffer. Only when the workers do understand and unite against capitalism in all the countries of the world for the purpose of achieving socialism, the ownership in common of all that is in and on the earth will war vanish from the human horizon.

Post-Capitalist Society (video)

 

How to Organise

 

As members of the World Socialist Movement, we are glad to see the emergence of organisations attacking capitalism as a system rather than merely its particular evils. In Britain, we in the Socialist Party have stood since 1904 for the abolition of capitalism, and the establishment of socialism, i.e. the abolition of money, private property and the state. For most of that time, the working class agenda has been dominated by those who said that socialism was about running capitalism better, be it Russia, China, Cuba, Sweden, etc. Now that this presence is lifting we find that many thousands have arrived at the same conclusions as ourselves, but have organised along the lines of the anarchist tradition. Whilst its diversity has allowed revolutionary ideas to flourish (as well as several reactionary ones!) it has the opposite problem to the Left. They are monolithic, but anarchism is fragmented.

The Socialist Party wants to recreate the social relationships of early human society, which were co-operative and sharing and based on giving and taking rather than buying and selling. We say this can be done without having to renounce the advances in sanitation, medicine and comfort that modern science and technology have brought, including the ability to find ecologically-acceptable techniques of energy generation and industrial production. We want to restore the original common ownership of the Earth’s resources – for the Earth to become, as the Diggers put it, “a common Treasury for All” –  and the social relationships that went with it, while retaining both industrialism and globalism.

In teaching that we don’t need formal decision-making rules and structures, some anarchists are propagating a dangerous illusion, dangerous because it opens the door to groups of discontented people being manipulated by some self-appointed and non-accountable elite or vanguard. We insist that, on the contrary, “self-organisation” is only possible as democratic self-organisation, involving formal rules and structures, precisely to prevent the emergence of unaccountable elites.

We’re not talking about the sort of structures advocated and practised by Leninist organisations such as the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), where the rules and structures are designed to enshrine control by a self-perpetuating elite (in the SWP, as in other Leninist organisations, supreme decision-making power rests in the hands of a central committee which is self-perpetuating in that it is elected as a slate—whose composition is chosen by the outgoing committee).

We are talking about structures that place decision-making power in the hands of the group as a whole, along the lines of the seven “principles of democratic structuring” listed by Jo Freeman in her essay The Tyranny of Structurelessness:

· Delegation of specific authority to specific individuals for specific tasks by democratic procedures.

· Requiring all those to whom authority has been delegated to be responsible to all those who selected them.

· Distribution of authority among as many people as reasonably possible.

· Rotation of tasks among individuals.

· Allocation of tasks along rational criteria.

· Diffusion of information to everyone as frequently as possible.

· Equal access to resources needed by the group.

This in fact is more or less the basis on which we, as a smallish revolutionary organisation, have always organised ourselves. It is also the basis on which we have always advocated that the mass movement to replace capitalism a stateless, moneyless society where goods are produced not to make profits but simply because people needed them” should organise itself—a democratic self-organised mass movement of people who want and understand such a society (we call it socialism, but which people can call what they like).

An anti-capitalist movement organised and co-ordinating its activities on this basis need have no fear, contrary to what all varieties of anarchists claim, of contesting elections to win control of political power from the supporters of capitalism who currently control it and who use it to maintain the economic power and privileges of the capitalist class.

In fact, the anarchists’ advocacy of either taking on the State head-on by “direct action” against it or by trying to ignore it and proceed as if it didn’t exist is foolish in the extreme. It increases the chances of violence. This is even more so when the anarchists concerned also reject the idea even of organising on a permanent basis with decision-making conferences, accountable delegates, voting, reporting back and, yes, binding decisions.

A supposedly spontaneous, unorganised anti-capitalist revolution such as advocated by various anarchist groups would only end in disaster out of which either the present rulers would succeed in reasserting their control or a new set of rulers would profit from the chaos to seize power. If we are going to get rid of capitalism the majority is going to have to organise itself to do so—in a permanent organisation with a democratic structure.

There's a Better World A Comin'

 

Thoughts on the New Year

 Once again, we reach the First of January. Once again, we are greeted with “A Happy and Prosperous New Year.” What are the prospects of a happy New Year for working people? When we wish each other a prosperous New Year! What a pious platitude. What have the workers to look forward to in 2023? Was 2022 a good year for us?

We can fully expect in the coming year for the wealthy to continue indulging themselves in luxuries while we toil and sweat to make that possible for them. The aim of the capitalists is to keep the workers submissive and willing wage slaves with flattery and promises.

 The workers of the world can control their destinies once they discard their delusions and shed the burden of the capitalists they have borne upon their backs.

We want a different way of life. We think this earth and its resources should be at the disposal of the whole of mankind. That it should be used to meet our needs and not wasted on a market economy. A new type of world based upon cooperation for the common good.

Why not reflect on what your New Year's resolution will be this year? Are you going to resolve to become a "better" person, which you have very little chance of keeping? Or are you going to make this the year you start to take control of your own life?

"I resolve that 2023 will be the year that I will organise democratically with my fellow workers to abolish capitalism and bring about a society in which we can all become happy and prosperous".

Socialism is Love (music)

 

The Socialist View

 

At this time of year, it is customary to cast a critical look over the political scene and take stock of the position in which the working class finds itself. The Socialist Party hold that capitalism cannot be fundamentally improved for the workers. We see no evidence at all to prove the unsoundness of our case. Only common ownership of the means of production can solve the workers' problems.  We resolve to raise aloft the banner of world socialism.

The great majority of the population has no property. They have no means of living except by working for others. They must seek out an employer master willing to hire them. The working class can offer only one thing—their ability to labour. They have nothing to sell except the energy in their bodies, brawn and brain.  Labour power is a commodity, the price of which is determined by its cost of production. All commodities are subject to this law. There may be temporary fluctuations in the price of a commodity due to variations in supply and demand, but these compensate one another in the long run, and a mean level can be traced through the ups and downs which is the actual cost of production. It is true that the workers' standard of living is not unalterably fixed. It is possible, in certain favourable circumstances, for the workers to win for themselves, through organised struggle, a higher standard of living. On the other hand, it is possible for the standard to be beaten down to lower levels.

What is wrong is capitalism: private or class ownership of the means of wealth production and distribution for profit. The workers do not live on profits; why, then, should they produce for profits? They should organise politically for control of the State machinery in order to establish a system of society based on production for use. The wants of the people would determine the nature and extent of all production instead of, as to-day, the profits of a ruling class.

When we talk about socialism we mean a worldwide sustainable society of common ownership, with no leaders, so by our global definition socialism has never existed before. Temporary or small-scale experiments have certainly occurred at different times in history, but we tend to question their usefulness in convincing anyone of the viability of socialism. If anything, the very fact that they didn’t last long can be trumpeted as proof that socialism is not viable. Of course, it’s not proof of any such thing, but neither is it proof that socialism could work long-term. Besides, not everyone finds such obscure historical debates either attractive or relatable. Perhaps what such attempts do show, however, is that the human desire for social equality, real democracy, free access and so on is very real and very strong, and the fact that people have acted on that desire in the past is a very good reason to think they will act on it again in the future, next time we hope with happier results. 

Marx always insisted (as we do) on the need for the working class to win control of state power before attempting to change the basis of society from class ownership to common ownership. He also saw elections as one possible way of doing this. For anarchists, political action in this sense is anathema. The state must not be captured, it must be confronted. Anti-capitalists should not contest elections, they should boycott them. Confronting the state — as some “anti-capitalists” tried — is a senseless policy, especially when it’s a question of a minority confronting a state-supported, even if only passively, by a majority. The state will always win in such confrontations since it has much more force at its disposal.

As to the time when there will be many, many more anti-capitalists (socialists), then boycotting elections — agreed there’s not much point in voting today, where all the candidates stand for the continuance of capitalism in one form or another — would also be senseless since this would be to leave state power in the hands of the pro-capitalists. Much more sensible would be to organise to take this power from them. That’s the difference between Marxian socialists and anarchists, a gap which could only be bridged by anarchists dropping their dogmatic opposition to elections and political action. Hopefully, they will.

The Good Fight (music)

 

Socialists For Democracy

 1. Socialism will be a world-wide system established by a politically conscious majority. We should expect support for it to grow first in the “advanced" industrialised capitalist countries, where the contradictions of capitalism are most glaring and the need to replace it most obvious. Here, in America and most of western Europe for example, political democracy is well-entrenched. This is no accident. Capitalism demands free movement and a free flow of information, and this is the form of political organisation which enables it to function most smoothly. The pressure for a democratic state comes from the capitalist class—which then exhorts workers to regard this “freedom” as an end in itself. As it gathers pace workers anywhere will be able to see that this is where their interest lies and will organise politically. A working class aware and organised enough to work for Socialism could take the establishment of political democracy in its stride.

2. Political education is necessary before we can get socialism, and at the moment most workers are politically ignorant since they believe problems like poverty and unemployment can be solved within capitalism. The main job of the Socialist Party is to combat all the political parties which spread and reinforce this belief. But the case for socialism is not complicated; it can be understood by anyone of normal intelligence (the majority, by definition). And once again capitalism works in our favour It makes ever more apparent the possibility of an abundance of wealth without being able to make it a reality. Sooner or later this must be understood.

3. The idea of socialism arises from the material conditions of capitalism and would continue to exist even if the Socialist Party were formally suppressed. Suppression means difficulties, expense and unpopularity for governments supplying it. 

Other people than socialists advocate free speech and would oppose any such move. For our part, we recognise that freedom of discussion is necessary for the growth of socialist ideas and we, therefore, argue with our opponents rather than trying to silence them. Finally, policemen and soldiers are themselves workers who will not remain immune to socialist campaign. But after the capture of political power through the ballot box they will in any case be controlled by the working class through Parliament so that there can be no question of effective resistance to the setting-up of the new society. And when that has been done the coercive forces will cease to exist.

Definitions of democracy and uses of the word are varied. Many have to be approached with qualifications. The Abraham Lincoln saying, “Government of the people, by the people, for the people," when posed as a definition, leaves out of account the fact that democracy was the basic method of administering social affairs long before the instruments of class government came into existence. Similarly, the conception that democracy is only possible inside socialism, where the cross-currents of class interest are absent, expresses the fact that democratic practice will then have reached a more perfect form, but does not assist an understanding of the historic nature of democracy if anything short of it is rejected as not being a democracy.

As a workable proposition, democracy can be defined broadly and simply as majority decisions; that is to say, the acceptance of the basic principle that the affairs of social administration or of government are carried out in conformity with the decisions or the will of the majority. This definition is broad and covers democratic practice as it was in an early class-free society, as it is in the more advanced capitalist countries to-day, and as it will be in the classless society of the future. Primitive Communism shows democracy in its most simple form. Practically everybody took part in tribal discussions, framed codes, rules and obligations of social conduct. There was no independent executive body, nothing which was the parallel of a separate law-making institution; there were few elected functionaries, whose conduct, in any case, was easily observed by the whole tribe. Democracy, as it was practised under Primitive Communism, is held up by some historians as an example of simplicity and perfection. It is a long stretch from the practice of those early days to the practice of the more advanced capitalist countries to-day. Social and political life to-day is far too complex to permit the intimate and direct control over the machinery of government such as was exercised by communistic tribes in their social and administrative affairs. But this does not affect that government in advanced capitalist countries rests upon the basic principle of majority decisions. English social and political institutions probably illustrate this better than those of other countries.

In England, assuming a politically educated electorate, the machinery of government can be used to carry out the wishes of the majority. Adults possess the vote. The vote returns members of their choice to Parliament. Parliament is a law-making institution; no law can be passed without its consent, and no government could continue without its support; it controls finance, approves appointments to the various administrative departments, the army, the judiciary, the civil service— and even the church; in all except very minor domestic matters, it prescribes the power of the titular head of the state, the king. The composition of the House of Commons, and, ultimately, the existence of the government rests upon the votes of a majority of the people. The government, therefore, depends upon the will of the people, which on major issues it could not defy for any length of time. The will of the people might be negative, anaemic tiling, apathetic or unenlightened, and in that proportion, any government might treat democratic practice with indifference. This, however, is evidence of the immaturity of the electorate, not of democratic institutions. An enlightened electorate would have the effect of making Parliament ever willing to placate the wishes and interests of those who can take away their power.

Democracy as it is practised to-day is adapted to the needs of modern conditions. It is the basis of parliamentary government in advanced capitalist countries. It has reached, broadly speaking, perhaps the highest point possible in a society where class conflict is dominant. Certainly, it has reached the stage where the workers, who are a majority of the population, can through their elected delegates gain complete control of the state machine. In this country, democracy has reached this point through centuries of development and struggle and has passed through many phases. Parliamentary government in many of the less advanced capitalist countries represents, broadly, stages through which this country it has passed and through which they are passing. In many cases, all the appearances of democratic government exist without reality. In Germany, for example, before the War, millions possessed the vote and returned their representatives to parliament, including a large group of Social-Democrats. Yet the Parliament had not full control of finance, the army, legislation, or administrative positions. Ministers of the Government could be appointed without reference to the wishes of Parliament. The English Parliament, through a series of conflicts over centuries, had struggled for each of these rights and had gained them. The German Parliament won them after the Great War. In England, the struggle for the reality of power has resulted in the complete victory of democratic Parliamentary government over autocracy. It has reached a point where Parliament is no longer the mere tool of autocrats and cliques, but the highly developed instrument through which the majority can impose its will if it wishes. Fundamentally, it can be stated that each stage in the struggle for the expansion of the democratic basis of Parliamentary government has been won by different sections of the people through their ability to exert sufficient pressure upon the governing class of the day. With succeeding sections of the capitalist class, the pressure was exerted through their possession of wealth and their ability to pay taxes. Money governments must have. With the working class, the pressure was exerted through its ability to discipline and organise itself on the industrial field. This is more possible where capitalism is the more highly developed and the workers are brought more into contact with each other through the massive nature of the capitalist productive forces.

Democracy is not the outcome of an idea. It is the inevitable outcome of the class struggle. Its degree of maturity or immaturity in different parts of the world is a measure of the political stage that the class struggle has reached in different countries. Where economic development lags behind the more advanced capitalist countries, there, too, within general limits and with certain exceptions, does political development and the maturity of democratic government lag behind. So there, in many cases, the conditions are less favourable for the workers to obtain immediate democratic rights. The latter is an important factor to take into account when workers struggling for democratic privileges have to decide on the form that the struggle should take in any particular set of circumstances.

To sum up: Democracy is not foundering, it is in a process of growth and expansion. Here and there it is subject to temporary throw-backs. In those countries where the democratic government has been merely a question of an artificial experiment, it has been suspended with little effort from any to retain it. This has not been due to the failure of democratic government as such, but to the fact that it had no real roots, no real support in social and democratic development on which it could be sustained. In other countries, Parliamentary government has been suspended with the support of the workers. Events will drive home their lessons. The present setbacks to the growth of democratic government will later result in a reaction in favour of it and an added determination to strive for it. Socialists understand the historic nature of democratic government and its relationship to the goal to which human society is moving: There can be no socialism without democracy. Socialist support for democracy, therefore, arises out of an understanding of the nature of capitalist society. The more that understanding is spread the less danger there is to democracy.

Carl Sagan on the Universe (video)

 

Socialists Against Capitalism

 

Capitalism disgusts us, and most socialists would say that their outlook is rooted in indignation at what they have experienced and seen. Nevertheless, the case for socialism must be based on material interests and not ideas of moral superiority.

Whatever enrages you and us by its inhumanity and unreasonableness in the capitalist world, in fact arises from the class ownership of the means of living. Articles in the Socialist Standard point this out: it is the socialist (materialist) analysis in contradistinction from beliefs that all can be made well by adjustments of capitalism, or by changes in attitudes and “values”.

Large numbers of capitalists and workers do profess moral attitudes. Political speeches abound in them. But what happens in practice, inexorably, is that “necessity” —i.e. the daily compulsions of capitalism—reduces them to either humbug or impractical personal philosophies. Everyone disapproves of wars, “the rat race”, and misery of all kinds: all who support capitalism go on doing (often expressing reluctance and impotence) the things which cause them.

On the question of relationships between people, we think you have been seduced by one of the claims made by religions and ethics—that “the brotherhood of man” is their preserve and depends on adopting their viewpoint. Man is a social creature with a natural tendency to co-operation and order; if he were not, we should not be here today. Class society opposes that tendency, setting man against man when neither wants it. In this circumstance “love thy neighbour” appears as a special moral teaching, but it is redundant.

Our position is the one stated by Marx and Engels in The Communist Manifesto: instead of seeking morality, justice, etc., we want to do away with them and have socialism instead. As ways of thinking about capitalist life they obstruct, not facilitate, harmonious relationships between men. And when socialism is established, people will be able to behave as you, quite correctly, want them to; to cite Marx again, we shall have “human” instead of “civil” society.

Certainly an individual is unique—by definition. Having said that one is no further forward—one has learnt nothing, clarified nothing, explained nothing. Our emphasis on class is an important part of our analysis of society. History shows that all propertied societies have been divided into economic (and social) classes each of which has a different relation to the means of production. In capitalist society there are two classes—owners and non-owners of the means of life. We call these classes capitalists and workers respectively.

The class to which any individual belongs is determined objectively by his relationship to the means of life. No matter how unique he is as an individual, if he is a member of the working class he will have interests in common with other workers, interests which conflict with those of the unique individuals who make up the capitalist class. The most obvious clash of interests being the price at which labour-power is bought and sold. This is the interminable wages struggle which is inseparable from capitalist ownership.

The expression of one’s unique individual personality is viciously limited by economic circumstances. For many people at present the highest aim in life is simply to be the same as everyone else. Look round you at the armies of workers churned out by the so-called education process as machine minders and office fodder. Millions of passive participants in the labour process stripped of virtually all individuality by the need to conform to a system of class exploitation. Your example of China (which is not socialist but state-capitalist) is just as repellent as anything the “free” west has to offer.

Only socialism can give the individual the freedom to develop his personality and abilities to the full, unrestricted by today’s profit-seeking and measurement by money. When we have established common ownership the individual will take his place as a free and equal member of society, able to give of his best secure in the knowledge that society is being run in a harmonious way for the benefit of all its members.

The Socialist Party differs from all other political parties in this country. We do not promise to do anything for you. We do not canvass for passive support so that we may rule, but ask for your understanding and active participation in the task of ridding the world of capitalism.

While the working class continue to put their faith in leaders they will continue to be disillusioned by political treachery, double-dealing and broken promises. We ask the working class to trust in their own abilities. They already run a complex world system from top to bottom and could quite easily run a socialist society in their own interests. All that is needed is socialist knowledge on the part of the working class. With this they can liberate themselves by voting socialist delegates to the centres of political power with a mandate to abolish capitalism.

A conscious socialist majority cannot be sold out, side-tracked or misled by leaders. In the absence of leaders promising to do things for the workers the “corruption” or degeneration of the revolution will be impossible. Delegates will be held to the sound socialist political principles clearly understood by those who elected them.

Many hold a number of other misconceptions about the Socialist Party’s case. First, socialism will be worldwide in nature. It cannot exist in one country only. Second, socialism will mean an end to the working class and the capitalist class—both will disappear; together with the need for a repressive state machine needed by rulers to keep the ruled in their place.

Chomsky on the Soviet Union