The Left-Wing

 

 If socialism means anything then it is the antithesis of capitalism. If capitalism means commodity production, production for profit, and wage slavery, then socialism as a competing political ideology must stand for something else. And it does. It is everything capitalism is not and everything every mainstream political party does not stand for. The Labour Party certainly has nothing to do with socialism. 

Socialism to us means a global system of society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the world’s natural and industrial resources. It means a world in which each person has a free and equal say in how their society is run. It means a world without borders or frontiers, social class or leaders, states or governments, force or coercion. It means abolishing the money system, releasing production from the artificial constraints of profit and establishing a world of free access to the benefits of civilisation. It means a world in which people give freely to society whatever skills or abilities they have, for the betterment of society, and take in return whatever they need, according to their own self-defined needs, from the stockpile of communal wealth. And we keep referring to “a world” because socialism can only exist on a global scale, just as capitalism, does. It can’t exist in one country, in isolation.

Dozens of organisations claim the socialist title and spread all manner of reformist gobbledygook. They spread nothing but confusion and make the job of genuine socialists all that more difficult when it comes to untangling the mess of ideas they have created in people’s minds. And it’s at this stage you get to realise just what a Sisyphean task being a socialist really is.

The idea is that:

1) you urge the workers to support Labour;

2) The workers support Labour as asked;

3)  Labour gets into power, fucks up and can make no improvements to capitalism;

4) The workers then get disillusioned and turn away from support of Labour’s brand of capitalism and turn to the SWP

5)  Who also supports capitalism, albeit state capitalism in which the revolutionary hierarchy will manage the exploitation of the workers instead of private capitalists, shooting anyone who will not comply for being a counter-revolutionary.

And you wonder why we are over the use of the word ‘socialism’?

“Why don’t you socialists all get together and form one big Socialist Party?”

So we explain that there are not just little differences that separate, say, ourselves from the SWP, or the SPEW or the CPB or the RCP or the AWL and which stop us from joining forces, but an unbridgeable ocean. They defend capitalism and we support socialism. They all want to reform the system, to ameliorate the harsher effects of capitalism. We are alone in wanting to abolish it. It’s like asking why we don’t get together with the Conservative Party – we, after all, all breathe oxygen. And the poor woman will walk away totally bewildered; under her arm half a dozen newspapers from the various stalls she has visited and which you know she is just not going to read. This may lay us open to the charge of sectarianism. But the SPGB are the oldest existing socialist organisation in Britain. Most of the leftist groups out there are the result of a split from a split from a split, Johnny-come-lately. We have not compromised our position. Our standpoint is as it was in 1904 - the abolition of the wages system - whereas many leftist groups change their policies more times than they change their socks, as if the generals of capitalism are forever changing their battle plan prompting them to retreat, regroup and attack again in a different formation. In truth, capitalism has not changed – it is still the same social system it always was and to which the time-honoured Marxian critique still applies.

Being a socialist means you become a myth shatterer – because you spend the greatest portion of your activity shattering myths, dispelling illusions, and setting the record straight.

The Lorax (video)

 

Leaders? Not Here

 

Many workers think we cannot function without leaders. This is a fallacy and one perpetuated by the master class to help them maintain their rule over our lives. Indeed, so prevalent is this philosophy, that from the cradle to the grave we are taught to mistrust our own intelligence and to look up to our ‘betters and superiors’ (schools, church, politicians, parents etc) and to accept without question the plans they draw up for our future.

It is assumed leaders run the world. Well, we think it is we, the workers who run the world. Politicians might make government policy, which becomes law, but it is we who build and man the hospitals and schools. It is we who build the bridges, roads and railways, ports and airports, and all the products that humans need to survive. It is we who produce everything from a pin to an oil rig and provide humanity with all the services it needs – we the working class. We don’t depend on leaders for these skills or for their guidance. They have no monopoly on our knowledge and intelligence and the inventions we dream up but benefit from them the most. If all the world's leaders died tomorrow, few would really miss them and society would function as before. If all the bosses decided not to turn up at their factories, their businesses would still function because it is we who see to it that they function. Do you need a boss standing over you all day in the office or workplace, showing you how to work? Are you constantly in search of the guidance of a superior individual to tell you how to run your life?

The concept of leadership has emerged as a result of class society and will end when we abolish class society and abolish the capitalist mode of production and all that goes with it. The master class have been allowed to lead because of their control over the means of living, because of their control of the education system and their monopoly of the media and other information processes.

It doesn’t have to be this way. The greatest weapons we possess are our class unity, our intelligence, and our ability to question the status quo and to imagine a world fashioned in our own interests. The master class perceives all of this to be a threat and so will do anything to keep us in a state of oblivion, dejection and dependency. Our apathy is the victory they celebrate each day. Our unwillingness to unite as a globally exploited majority and to confront them on the battlefield of ideas is the subject of their champagne toasts.

Only sheep need leaders, and if workers want to be sheep then they can expect to get fleeced. The truth is, we have been led for so long by idiots that we have forgotten our own collective strength and lost sight of just what we, as a species, working together, are capable of.

The WSM has never had leaders in its entire existence. If someone can lead you into socialism, there will always be someone who can lead you out again. Socialism must be the free and conscious decision of the majority, otherwise, it will never work. Our position is now as it was at our inception – there is nothing that we can do for the working class that it is not already capable of doing for itself. For Socialism to be a success, it must be established without leaders and followers. It must be established by ordinary people all over the world uniting and working together to establish a new system peacefully and democratically – a world in which the exploited at last regain control of their own destiny.

The Story of Harriet Tubman (movie)

 

Learning about the WSM

 

Many of you will know little about The World Socialist Movement (WSM) or our ideas. Certainly, many people have heard the word “socialist” and may mistakingly imagine it has something to do with the nationalised industries or with countries like China and the former Soviet Union. It is understandable that many people regard socialism as just another political cliché, once used by Labour politicians to win votes, but having very little meaning.

The WSM stands solely for socialism because we do not think that the present social system – capitalism – can ever be made to work in the interests of the majority of the people. This is not the fault of government policies, but the present social system in which they are operating. Capitalism always puts the needs of a minority who own and control the factories, farms, offices, mines, media, and the means of wealth production and distribution before the needs of ourselves, the working class.

It is a hard but undeniable fact that no political party – including ourselves – can legislate to humanise capitalism or make it run in the interest of the working class. That is why it is important that the working class stops giving its support to politicians who support the profit system. None of them can solve unemployment or crime or any of the other social problems we face today, despite their proclaimed recipes for success. None of them will prevent tens of millions from starving to death each year. None of them will provide decent housing for everyone. None of them will end the threat of human annihilation as a result of war, because militarism is inevitable within a system based upon the ferocious competition for resources, markets and trade. Why waste your time voting for parties that cannot make any of these urgently needed changes? Why go on in the hope that some miracle will happen and end the insanity of the profit system?

So what’s the alternative? We say that the resources of society must be taken into the hands of the whole community – and by that we do not mean the state, but all of us, organised together, consciously and democratically.

In a socialist society, we will produce for use, not profit. This means having food to feed the world’s population, not to dump in the sea if it cannot be sold profitably. Producing for use means ending the colossal waste of resources on armies, armaments, trade, banking and insurance and all the other social features which are only necessary within capitalism. By running society on the basis of common ownership, democratic control and production for use we can all have free access to all goods and services.

Two points should be clear to you by now. Firstly, this is no ordinary political argument. We have made you no false promises; we have not patronised you and neither do we beg for your support. Indeed we do not ask for your support unless you are convinced that the case for socialism is a rational one and in your interest. Socialism, if it is to be the democratic and sane society that we envisage it will be, can only be established when a majority of the people understand it and want it, so there is no point in seeking support on any other basis.

Secondly, you will have noticed that what we are advocating is different – it has never existed. The Tory have-beens have nothing new to offer. The local Labour Party, if re-elected, will continue its futile exercise of trying to manage a system based upon exploitation in the interest of the exploited. The Nationalists, if given half the chance, will pursue the vicious policy of dancing to the tune of profitability. At the same time, human needs are ignored, with just as much gusto as the other confusions.  Do you agree with the following statements:

· Capitalism puts profits for the few before the needs of the many.

· Labour governments, “Communist” states and proposals to reform the present system cannot establish socialism.

· Socialism is yet to exist.

· Socialism means a society of common ownership and democratic control, where production is solely for use.

· Socialism means a world without buying or selling, where people give freely of their abilities and take according to their needs.

· When a majority understand and wants socialism, the new system will be established.

American Imperialism (video)

 

Dumping Religion

 In 1910 the Socialist Party published  Socialism and Religion, the pamphlet in which our attitudes are fully stated. 

Members of the Socialist Party are frequently told that Christianity and socialism share the same objective, i.e. the brotherhood of man. Our answer ever since the foundation of the Socialist Party has always been that we are unequivocally opposed to religion in every form. No-one holding a religious belief is admitted to membership. The opposition is twofold.

 First, to give credit to the supernatural and supposed absolute truths is to block an intelligent understanding of the world. Second, organised religion has always been fostered by rulers to keep subjects in their place. With fear and ignorance as stock-in-trade, and poverty and submission as blessed states, belief provides a perfect instrument. Plenty of other organisations and individuals may share the feeling that the churches are in the pockets of the ruling class, but are not prepared to damage their prospects of power by publicly declaring it and instead apply the evasive principle “religion is a private affair” which has become the widespread acceptance in the left-wing radical movements. 

A regular churchgoer is now almost an exceptional figure. In non-urban areas where vestigial beliefs linger on and the churches’ direct influence on social life has continued longest, only handfuls now attend. In recent years hundreds of churches in Britain have been closed or demolished and their parishes incorporated into others. Most people acknowledge never attending church except for baptisms, marriage and funerals; but still, assert faith in God and an afterlife. The word “atheist” has curious connotations of shock while “agnostic” is more respectable, conveying vague intellectual qualities.

There is a shrewdly-conceived episode in The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists where a preacher is challenged over a biblical passage saying believers may take poison without being harmed, shown a likely-looking bottle, and invited to demonstrate. His answer—” I wouldn’t be such a fool” — is precisely what all Christians would say about the literal pursuit of their beliefs. Why should they not be expected to pursue them if they do believe them? After all, it is usually Christians who say to holders of unrespectable views: “What would the world be like if everyone were like you?” Well, what would it be like if everyone acted on Christian precepts? To see large numbers of people rejecting riches, turning the other cheek, giving precedence to the meek and lowly, etc., would be a nice change.

Of course, many Christians disclaim superstition and mythology; most of our correspondents do. They could hardly say otherwise if an argument is to be had. The main supernatural claims of religion have been demolished by scientific discovery which has become everyday fact, from Darwin and Lyell to space exploration,. Even allowing that many Americans reportedly think no-one has been to the moon and the whole thing is a TV studio production, nobody has commented that one of the oldest props of rule by fear has gone. It was never suggested or expected that the astronauts might run into flights of angels or pass Paradise on the way; yet only a generation ago schoolchildren were taught and adults believed that they were all above the earth, looking down.

The religious fashion today is to talk as if those beliefs were never taken seriously, and the remaining supernatural doctrines can (if it suits, that is) be disowned. Thus, the self-styled “thinking” Christian can play a game of can’t-catch-me: on one hand repeating Creation, virgin birth, Hell, Holy Trinity, and resurrection, on the other explaining that these are allegories whose meanings his opponents don’t understand. It would be more to the point to say that he finds them impossible to support but is anxious for other people to believe them.

The decline of religion is due to more than simply scientific knowledge, however. Just as devout Christians do not live according to the Commandments and the Beatitudes because it would be materially inconvenient to do so, working people generally are less and less ready to swallow doctrines palpably against their interests. A notable instance is the increasing failure of working-class Catholics to comply with their Church’s orders about family life. Irish Catholics practise birth control of a kind by marrying as late as possible, but in Britain and America, the majority of Catholic families are seemingly affected by relative sterility. The reason is obvious. In a different environment, the extreme poverty of outsize families becomes unacceptable: belief goes to the wall.

But what of “the brotherhood of man”? Can the absurdities, the superstitious and absolutist elements be stripped from religion and an entity remain which socialists and Christians are striving for alike? The answer is no. The presumption that brotherliness and co-operation are “what Christianity is all about” is another religious spoof. They are what, humanity is all about. Man is a social being, with co-operation and order as his dominant tendencies — if he had not them, we should not be here today.

Socialists, therefore, do not seek the brotherhood of man: it exists already. What we aim at is the creation of a society in which it can flourish, instead of being continually frustrated and perverted as it is under capitalism. And, to come back to where we began, religion gives no aid in that task. On the contrary, the churches’ support for capitalism and Christians’ hocus-pocus beliefs, it is an enemy of social progress. If improbably, in a sane society there turned out to be individuals who could not live without imaginative consolations, that weakness would be accepted (certainly it would not be treated with the malevolence with which Christians behave towards atheists today). However, we are in the world of capitalism, and in that context socialism and religion are diametrically opposed.

The Free World Charter (video)

 A video not by ourselves but expressing similar aspirations as ourselves 

Unshackle the Wage-Slaves

 

For the Socialist Party, our purpose is one of waking the working class up to understand the economic and social forces which make them wage-slaves. So long as the means of wealth production and distribution are privately owned by the capitalist class, so long will the labour-power of the propertyless worker be a commodity which must be sold for the best price according to the fluctuations of supply and demand. Whether at any particular moment, the wages be fair or foul, the fierce competition arising from ever-present unemployment prevents wages in the long run from exceeding the cost of living a shoddy life. The remedy for this problem is for society to own the means of production, and to produce for use. The contradiction between social production and private ownership is the rock upon which capitalism splits. It has been the historical function of the capitalist class to bring about social production, with its enormous possibilities for human comfort and culture; it is the historical function of the working class to bring social ownership and control into line with social operation, and make these possibilities a reality.

The capitalist class as a whole grows relatively richer every year, and the working class grows relatively poorer. The workers must fight to resist the constant attempts of the masters to extract more work for less pay. Despite the heroic efforts of the workers, they are fighting the battle on the wrong ground. In the economic field, the capitalist is the stronger, and while the worker accepts capitalist ownership of the means of production the capitalists will remain the stronger. This unpalatable truth must be faced by the workers and they must grasp the fact (and grasp it soon, or risk utter degradation) that the capitalist class has neither natural nor supernatural right to the control of society, and only owns and rules because society, the vast mass of which is composed of workers, gives it that control and can take the control away as soon as the desire exists.

Violence is never far below the surface of capitalism. The institutionalised violence of the State exists to protect the class monopoly of a minority over the means of wealth production and its agents have continued to contain the frustrations caused by the insecure and deprived existence of the working class under capitalism. But the scarcity the working class the world over has to endure is artificial. The world's means of production are quite capable of producing an abundance of wealth from which everybody could freely take according to their needs. Capitalism holds back production because it operates, and has to operate, according to the rule “No profit, no production” and it restricts the consumption of the vast majority to what is needed to keep them in efficient health — and provide profit.

Those who accept capitalism, and choose to work within it, inevitably find themselves dividing the working class by arguing the merits of which worker, or group of workers, should get which scarce job or house or hospital bed, school or university place.  But they fail to see the very real restrictions that capitalism places on doing this. 

Under capitalism, production is for profit, not for the benefit of the working class. The fact, confirmed by years of sad experience, is that capitalism just cannot be reformed so as to work in the interests of the working class, the majority of society. It is futile to try to do so. We are not saying workers should not protest against their sufferings under capitalism. Of course, they should. But they should fight back on sound lines — for socialism, not reforms of capitalism. What is called for is an end to the situation where workers are in the degrading position of having to struggle amongst themselves for the basic necessities of life, especially when the amount of these necessities is artificially restricted by the same system that degrades and exploits them.

Socialism alone can end this, by making the means of production the common property of all mankind so that they can be used to provide abundance for all. The struggle for socialism will unite rather than divide the working class because it does not set workers against workers over the few crumbs capitalism has to offer but is so clearly in the interests of them all.

The plain fact is that there is no national solution to the problems which face workers. These problems are not essentially different from those of workers in all the other countries of the world. Workers everywhere live under the same system, world capitalism, which artificially divides the world into States and cultivates loyalty towards these States in the form of nationalism in order to further the interests of the various sections of the world capitalist class who rule them. The working class, too, is a worldwide class with a common world-wide interest: the overthrow of capitalist rule everywhere and the freeing of modern technology from the fetters of the profit motive by the establishment of socialism.

Socialism is necessarily a world system because the system it will replace, capitalism already is. As far as the production of wealth is concerned there is already one world. The production of the world’s wealth, artificially limited as it is under capitalism, is one huge co-operative enterprise involving factories, farms shipyards, railways, warehouses, offices and workers of every kind in all parts of the world. What is not worldwide under capitalism is the ownership and control of this productive system, which is scattered amongst hundreds of competing States and big international companies. What socialism will do is to bring this vast worldwide productive network under the control of mankind so that they can use it for their own benefit: first of all, to abolish poverty destitution, hunger, slums, ignorance and ill-health and second, to provide an abundance of wealth from which every single human being can freely take according to their needs without money or rationing of any kind. On this basis, boring work can be eliminated and free men and women come to enjoy the fruits of the centuries of forced labour of their fathers. The degrading struggle for the means of life, and the senseless hatred it engendered, will become a thing of the past. We insist that this is relevant everywhere. We too want an immediate end to the senseless sacrifice of working-class life for no useful purpose (not even now the interests of their masters, as was once the case).

But, over and above this, we want socialism, a far more worthwhile objective than a mere return to “normal” capitalism with its boring jobs, its dole queues, its slums and its general poverty and exploitation minus only the extra violence.

We urge workers in Ireland to join with us, and their fellow workers in all other countries, in working to establish as quickly as possible socialism, a world of peace and plenty.

The Union ABC (music)

 

Distract, Divide, and Conquer

 

When we can convince a majority of our fellow workers that putting into practice of our principles will bring about an era of industrial democracy — the only true freedom — then we know our goal will be achieved. It cannot be gained until we do this. We do not believe in minority rule of any kind, no matter by whom. We do not believe in dictatorship, whether of the plutocracy or the misnamed “dictatorship of the proletariat.”

We have been for centuries and are now suffering from dictatorships, and we want to help abolish them from the face of the earth.We subscribe to the right of a majority to decide under what kind of system we shall live. Any other method means chaos. Our business is to do our part in convincing the majority that they must use their organised political power to achieve their freedom.

The Socialist Party has often been vilified by pseudo-revolutionists who hope they can “create” a revolution by following the methods of those in other countries where the industrial environment and institutions of government were very different.We believe in using every effort to overthrow the present economic system called capitalism. We believe in using every democratic effort to capture the political power of the state to be used in overthrowing this system. We believe in it because we also believe that the peaceable method of the ballot is the most efficient method; that it is real “direct action.”

Workers have but one enemy, the capitalist class. The only war worth fighting is the class war, the war of the workers against the robber class. The abolition of the profit and wages system is the only fight that will benefit us. We are oppose  ALL armies and ALL wars  because they always have been, and always will be, the weapons of the ruling class to keep us in wage slavery. We object to having single working person sacrificed to the interests of the capitalist class.  We have to fight the class struggle because nothing other than the class struggle can solve the problem of war and peace. The Socialist Party rejects  nationalism as a reason for  workers to go to war.

We judge any action taken by the wage slave fraternity from the standpoint of working class interests. The class struggle is the guide to tactics and to policy. We approve of those acts that aid in the fight against capitalism and condemn those that strengthen the power of labour’s enemies.

 The Socialist Party has  no scheme for re-drawing frontiers or solving minority problems. We recognise the fact that many people are much concerned with religious or language or other differences, but we do not believe that these are the cause of national conflicts and racial hatreds. The problem of making all countries fit for all people to live in will not be solved by changing borsers. When there is no longer a profit-seeking privileged class to bedevil relationships between peoples, and when there is no exploited class to suffer poverty and unemployment, the national problem will be solved, but that means socialism and no frontiers.

It is capitalism that causes the poverty of the mass of the population, on both sides of all frontiers, and it is capitalism that threatens the worker always with unemployment: but how convenient it is for the capitalist to hold up the foreigner as the cause of it all. If  foreign workers stays at home we are told they are destroying “our” industry by their cheap labour. If foreign workers happens to be a minority group inside the frontier, they are taking “our” job. If a person who speaks our language is in a minority group in some other country, he or she is told they can only find prosperity and happiness by agitating to rejoin the fatherland or motherland.  

Slum housing, malnutrition, diseaseare directly the result of poverty. To eliminate these evils, poverty must be abolished.

Poverty is caused through a small minority class owning the means of wealth production and distribution; as a consequence, they also own the wealth produced by the sweat and toil of the working class. The cure for poverty is simple. Here are the directions on the label.

Let the working class organise for socialism. Make use of their votes to gain control of Parliament and thus control of the armed forces. Eject the owners of the means of production from their ownership. Make the instruments of wealth production the common property of all, and the wealth produced by the community free of access to all.

Then a complete change in the economic basis of society will be achieved. Poverty and its ills, as well as war, will become for all times a thing of the past.

The Enemy Is Capitalism, The Fight Is For Socialism! 

Understanding Money (video)