Marx, class and socialism (1988)

From the August 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Class and class struggle are central to an understanding of the case for socialism. Marx and Engels had been concerned to show the "class struggle as the primary motive force of history, and especially the class struggle between bourgeoisie and proletariat as the great lever of modern social change" (Circular letter to Bebel, Liebknecht, Bracke and others).

Marx, however, undertook no systematic definition of class. While he certainly planned to do so. the unfinished chapter of Capital intended for the purpose ends after a few paragraphs with a note from Engels that the manuscript breaks off. The omission has certainly fuelled the confusion and ignorance surrounding the meaning of class and its relevance to the socialist case.

It would however be surprising if, in the whole of the writings of Marx and Engels, we were not able to understand what they meant. Indeed, the whole of their writings is about understanding the historic dynamic of class, the class struggle and the abolition of class society. Within the body of their writings there exist enough references for us to constitute what they meant by class. Marx did not, of course, invent class. His contribution was to articulate and conceptualise the existing historical reality. Class is not some figment or idea emanating from the mind of Marx.

In the unfinished chapter Marx prepared to answer his own question - what is a class? - and began by writing of three “great classes" in modern society. He identified these, firstly, on the basis of income: wage for labour, profit for the capitalists and rent for the landowners. But note here that income is the result of different property relationships, different relationships to the means of production. The word "great" was not intended to imply numerous, but the importance such groups had to the functioning of society in a particular manner. The working class is the most numerous but the capitalists constitute a tiny and parasitic minority. The greatness of the latter arose from the fact that they constitute the ruling class in modern society by virtue of their legal ownership and monopoly control of the means of production and distribution of wealth. This position allows a class to dominate not only in the economic sphere but, as Marx and Engels stated:

in every epoch the thoughts of the ruling class are the ruling thoughts; ie. the class that is the ruling material power of society is at the same time its ruling intellectual power. The class that has the means of material production in its control. controls at the same time the means of intellectual production (The German Ideology).

Capitalism has now succeeded in absorbing the landlord class, leaving society polarised between two classes: capitalists and workers.

Marx stresses the importance of production as the determinant of social class and differs fundamentally from the apologist sociologists who stress status differences. His reason is simple, for. since it is productive activity that creates history, then it follows that an understanding of humans' quest for subsistence, their production, holds the key to the understanding of historical change. In order to live, to satisfy basic needs, humans must work. And work is a fundamental aspect of human life.

There are generally two ways of organising work. One is where individuals or collectives of producers use their own means and objects of production and distribute their own products. The second is class society, where a particular class owns or controls the means and instruments of production and organises the work of the producing class with the intention of producing and expropriating surplus wealth. Inevitably there is a conflict of interest between producers and expropriators over the control of the means of production and the division of the products; between feudal lord and serf, between capitalist and worker. In class society there always exists class struggle.

In societies dominated by owning classes - in Europe, slavery, feudalism and capitalism - the slaveowner, lord or capitalist is not concerned with the production of wealth as such, but with the production of surplus wealth. Surplus wealth requires surplus labour, or exploitation. Marx put it thus:

The essential difference between the various economic forms of society, between, for instance a society based on slave-labour, and one based on wage-labour, lies only in the mode in which this surplus-labour is in each case extracted from the actual producer (Capital, Vol I. chapter 9. section 1).

and again:

Capital has not invented surplus-labour. Wherever a part of society possesses the monopoly of the means of production, the labourer, free or not free, must add to the working time necessary for his own maintenance an extra working time in order to produce the means of production (Capital, Vol I. chapter 10. section 2).

He shows that the struggle between the exploiter class and the exploited class over the organisation of work, distribution of the social product, working conditions and the results of production is the living contradiction between the forces of production and the relations of production.

Above all Marx is concerned to show that ownership is a social relationship; that it is not simply based on the individuals property holding but is a relationship between people, through objects. Marx posed the simple question of how people stood in relationship to other people, how some people managed to acquire vast amounts of wealth while the sole role of others was to engage in its production. The production of wealth was a relationship in which the great majority produced but did not own and a small group owned but did not produce. Such origins of class society lay rooted in historical development. Keys to understanding lay in the study of the past as a guide to the present and future. To say that society is based on class is to articulate the real life experience of people's social relationships with one another. The capitalist class owns and controls the means of production through the legalised power vested in it by the state. The producers have no such property and are forced to sell mental and physical energies for wages or, what is the same thing, a salary.

When modern sociologists use the term class they omit this fundamental fact and fail to address the issue of the social relationship of production. People are classified in some hierarchical logic based on income, occupation. education, or some notion of status. For all that this tells us about human and property relationships, we might as well classify people by the size of their noses.

When scientific socialists speak of classes we are discussing property relationships and social activity. Marx asks first how income is obtained, but warns against commuting class differences into differences in "the size of purses".

The size of one's purse is a purely quantitative distinction whereby any two individuals of the same class may be incited against one another at will" (Moralizing Criticism and Critical Morality, 1847).

The language used by those sociologists who bolster the society of oppression is carefully chosen to avoid the real issue of the prevailing class struggle. They present us with a gradational picture of class society. Classes are described as "above" or "below" other classes. Little mention is given to the inherent antagonisms that are the inevitable result of class society.

Socialists rightly do not speak of "upper", "middle" and "lower middle" classes. Instead we use the language that best describes the social relationships that actually matter in society: we speak of capitalist and worker, feudal lord and serf, master and slave. Neither do we accept that class relations are based on forms of technology, the level of industrialisation or the technical division of labour. Members of the working class are not just blue collar workers, and neither are technical workers part of some lower middle class or "new petty bourgeoisie". For, as stated, class relations are socially determined by reference to the property relationship and are not defined by some notion of an occupational hierarchy. Class operates in the social relations of production and not in the realm of consumption. Owning a car or possessing a mortgage does not alter the fact that you are a member of the working class.

In the English preface to the Communist Manifesto Engels sums up the aim of the movement for socialism as “once and for all emancipating society at large from all exploitation. oppression, class distinction and class struggles". The role assigned to the World Socialist Movement is to assist in building a class-conscious working class the world over who understand the nature of class society and who will take, through majority action, the necessary steps to end oppression. With the abolition of minority ownership of production and distribution will come the abolition of class society.

Ewan Knox

A Declaration of Class War

Socialists are always accused of trying to set class against class. We plead guilty but we actually only point out what already exists. We are engaged today in a class war; and why? For the simple reason that in the the capitalist system in which we live, society has been is mainly divided into two economic classes—a small class of capitalists who own the means of producing wealth and a great mass of workers who own nothing and are compelled to seek employment in the services of the owners. Between these two classes there is an irrepressible economic conflict. The capitalist is the economic master and the political ruler in capitalist society. But we also want to get rid of the class struggle. We’re going to do it by getting rid of the profit system which exists only because there is a class of squeezers and a class of the squeezed.


All government is class government; and that the industrialist and aristocratic thieves hold the reins of political power. The employers know that class exist and they themselves are sufficiently class-conscious to engage in the class- struggle. It is the class struggle of the workers that is to be decried. No political party can serve two masters. No political party can serve the class which owns the wealth and also the one which produces the wealth but does not own it. No political party can serve both the robbers and the robbed at the same time. The Socialist Party is thus solely the political party of the working class. No part of its mission is to reach re-conciliation the capitalist class. We are organised to fight that class.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain is in fundamental opposition to all other parties. It proclaims that the building of socialism, the re-organisation of the economic life of the whole world, is impossible, unless the working class overthrows the capitalist class and becomes the ruling class. The Socialist Party therefore is the enemy of capitalists and capitalist parties. The political power of the capitalist class is exercised through the parliamentary institutions, through its class control of the armed forces, the police force, the law courts, the media and education centres. Having conquered the capitalists and with political power in the hands of the workers, the way to socialism is clear to proceed to socialise the economic life, and, for the first time in history give the working class, i.e., the great majority of the population, control over their daily lives and power to build the future as they themselves deem fit.

Many workers imagine that they must have a leader to look to as a guide to follow. Workers have been brought up with that belief and have been taught that they are dependent upon their betters and that without a leader decisions cannot be made and directions cannot be followed, so, therefore, they instinctively look for a leader. We have depended too much on leaders and not enough on ourselves. The Socialist Party doesn’t want you to follow it but rather acquire self-reliance. As long as you can be led by an individual you will be betrayed by an individual. That does not mean that all leaders are dishonest or corrupt but many of them are deluded themselves, a case of the blind leading the blind. The most dangerous leader is not the corrupt leader, but the honest, ignorant leader. That type of leader is just as dangerous as the one who deliberately sells you out. There are leaders whose good intentions are the paving stones to hell. Daniel DeLeon’s classic phrase, to describe them was “the labor lieutenants of the capitalist class.”

 Far from even fomenting class war too many leaders have been almost too anxious to secure permanent peace between the wage-earners and their employers and forget that under existing conditions the capitalists always have the whip hand. They preach that there is no basic conflict of interests between the bosses and the workers, between the capitalist system and the interests of the working class. Reformers claim that a “promised land” can be brought about only if the capitalists and the working class are “reasonable”, if only we all “work together in the national interests”. With such slogans they paper over the class nature of the system. They cover up the inevitability of class conflict. They are for class collaboration, not class struggle.

The class war is our war and our only war. We have no interest in championing any wars for ruling class conquest and plunder. In all these wars the workers are slaughtered while their masters get fat on the spoils of conquest. The time has come for the workers to cease fighting the battles of their bosses and to fight their own; to cease being slaughtered like cattle for the profit of the ruling class and to line up in the class struggle regardless of race or nationality for the overthrow of class rule and for the emancipation of their class and humanity.

“Your King and Country Need You,
Ye hardy sons of toil.
But will your King and Country need you
When they’re sharing out the spoil?”

class loyalty

The media and the political mouthpieces of capitalist ideology have done their job well. Scottish workers are being caught up by the "patriotism" of the referendum debate - either for independence or for the union. Capitalism has reached a point at which it threatens all humanity and not just the divided national, religious, racial (or other falsely labeled) identity groups.

The patriotism of the capitalist class is better called national chauvinism. This "patriotism" equates loyalty to the nation with loyalty to the capitalist-controlled government and its policies. It seeks the acquiescence of workers in the crimes, aggressions, depredations and depravities of the ruling class and its agents.  It is intended to trick workers into sanctioning whatever is deemed in the interests of the business class. It's nationalistic baloney asserts that our interests as a “nation” are totally bound up with, if not identical , to those of our exploiters. But as we know, in class societies the state does not serve everyone equally. Instead, its main efforts are directed to helping the class that rules over the economy. In capitalism, that means essentially helping the capitalist class accumulate capital, repress opposition to their exploitative rule, and legitimise all the forms in which this goes on.  But to do this job well, the state has to appear legitimate in the eyes of most of its citizens, which requires above all else that its consistent bias on behalf of the capitalist ruling class be hidden from view. The flag and other patriotic symbolism are crucial to the success of this effort. Throughout, emotions play a much larger role than reason or thinking generally, and the strongest emotion evoked by patriotism is the pleasure of belonging to a cooperative social community where everyone is concerned with the fate of others. Unfortunately, the social community only exists in the shadow of an illusory community dominated by the ruling economic class and its state, where none of this applies.

Then there is a form of patriotism to which workers should adhere; it is loyalty, not to the institutions of the nation, but to the people; more precisely, to the majority of the people -- the working class -- with whom they share a common material interest. For workers today, class consciousness -- loyalty to one's class -- is patriotism. International working-class interests are the paramount interests to be served -- not those of any capitalist nation state. Without solidarity to one's class and to one's comrades. workers are helpless in the face of the ruling class's monopoly of the means of production. If workers can stick together, they can respond to employers' control of work. Solidarity between workers is therefore an essential prerequisite for success in class struggle. Class consciousness is the key to working-class victory in ending the class struggle.

Patriotism works to disguise the real differences which exist amongst people—which are differences of class and which involve irreconcilable differences of interests—and to encourage workers to identify with the institution—the state—which is the primary defender of class society. The slogan “workers of the world unite” is in part a call on proletarians to acknowledge that their home is in the company of other members of their class wherever they are to be found.

Scotland is divided into two classes -- the working class and the class of employers/investors that lives off its labour.  We can wonder how a capitalist party which of course the SNP is can keep on winning all the elections. The answer often lies far less in their programs than in the flag and other patriotic symbols with which these programs come wrapped. Most workers vote against their class interests because they "love" their "country".

There are a various definitions of what class is. Many of them assign people to class groups on the basis of cultural and behavioural attributes such as dress, speech, education levels, shopping habits, and employment sector. Such concepts are fallacious in that they reduce class to a matter of choice, taste, when it is nothing of the sort. Whether you read the Sun or the Times, or whether you shop at Asda or at Sainsbury's, is entirely irrelevant. The middle class are, in reality, workers. They too have to sell their labour to a master in order to survive, and the fact that the wages of that labour may be more, or that the job may be “white collar” rather than “blue collar” is of no significance.

In essence, there are two classes: the working class and the capitalist or ruling class. What matters is your relation to capital. The working class are the vast majority of people on the planet, those who must sell their labour in order to earn a living and survive. The ruling class are, to use a rough figure, the top one-percent of society. They do not have to sell their labour or work, but instead are maintained by expropriating rent, interest, and profit from the working class who produce it. They are, in short, parasites. The bourgeoisie are united across the national divide and therefore so should we. The working class must unite to fight against attacks and refuse to be divided or distracted. This is the only way to defend the gains of the past and fight for a future society worth living in.

Working people have only one country—the planet earth. There is only one foreigner—the boss.

'Enough is Enough'

People have had their bellyful of capitalism. We all know what we’re against, more or less, on the other hand, we aren’t too clear about what we’re for. A major question for socialists is how to challenge and overthrow the capitalist state to build a just society. Signposts to that society would be invaluable. There is throughout the world a widespread popular perception that socialism is a coercive system, and the experiences of ‘communist’ parties in power have justified that impression. Generally speaking, while the world's peoples hate capitalism, they fear socialism. These issues are at the heart of socialism's crisis, and only as socialists develop a movement and a vision which are at once revolutionary and democratic will they turn the corner of that crisis. The Socialist Party rejects any notion of class dictatorship that implies a despotic form of government, that identifies the dictatorship of the proletariat with an ever-expanding state apparatus or that infers a dictatorship of any ruling party over the people as a whole.

Ownership divides society into two distinct classes. One is the class of employers, and the other is the class of wage-workers. The employers are the capitalist class; and the wage-workers are the working class. While the working class, by their labour, produce to-day — as in the past — all the wealth that sustains society, they, nevertheless, lack economic and industrial security, suffer from overwork, enforced idleness, and their attendant miseries, all of which are due to the present capitalist form of society. The capitalist class, through the ownership of most of the land and the tools of production — which are necessary for the production of food, clothing, shelter and fuel — hold the workers in complete economic and industrial subjection, and thus live on the labour of the working class. Working people, in order to secure food, clothing, shelter and fuel, must sell their labour-power to the owning capitalists — that is to say, they must work for the capitalist class. The working class do all the useful work of society, they are the producers of all the wealth of the world, while the capitalist class are the exploiters who live on the wealth produced by the working class. As the capitalists live off the product of the workers, the interest of the working class is diametrically opposed to the interest of the capitalists. The capitalist class — owning as they do, most of the land and the tools of production — employ the working class, buy their labour-power, and return to them in the form of wages, only part of the wealth they have produced. The rest of the wealth produced by the workers the capitalists keep; it constitutes their profit — i.e., rent, interest, and dividends. Thus the working class produce their own wages as well as the profits of the capitalists. In other words, the working class work a part only of each day to produce their wages, and the rest of the day to produce surplus (profits) for the owning class. The interest of the employing class is to get all the surplus (profits) possible out of the labour of the employees. The interest of the worker is to get the full product of their labour.

Hence there is a struggle between these two classes - the “class war” It is a struggle between the owning capitalist class — which must continue to exploit the working class in order to live — and the non-owning working class, who, in order to live must work for the owners of the land and the tools of production. To win economicfFreedom the non-owning Working Class must force this struggle into the political field and use their political power (the ballot) to abolish capitalist class ownership, and thus revolutionise in the interests of the working class the entire structure of society. The capitalist class, who own most of the land and the tools of production, own the government and govern the working people, not for the well-being of the people but for the well-being and profit of the ruling class.

It is only by using their political power that the Capitalist Class make their exploitation of the Working Class legal and the oppression of their system constitutional. And it is only by using their political power that the Working Class can make their own exploitation illegal and their own oppression unconstitutional. It is only by the use of their political power that the Working Class can abolish Capitalist Class rule and privilege, and establish a planned form of Society based on the Collective Ownership of all the land and the tools of production, in which equal industrial right shall be the share of all. We, members of the working class, organised in the Socialist Party declare that to the workers belong the future. We, the workers of the world can, through the ballot box and the power of the vote, abolish the capitalist system of ownership with its accompanying class rule and oppression, and establish in its place socialism — an industrial democracy — wherein all the land and the tools of production shall be the common property of the whole people, to be operated by the whole people for the production of commodities for use and not for profit. We ask other members of the working class to organise with us to end the domination of private ownership — with its poverty-breeding system of unplanned production — and substitute in its place the socialist co-operative commonwealth in which every worker shall have the free exercise and full benefit of his or her faculties, multiplied by all the modern factors of technology and civilisation.

The Socialist Party holds aloft its ideas. It is above all compromise, a party of truth. We alone cannot now transform society. What we can do is help transform the people who will remake society. Our task as socialists is to make more socialists. There are differences among those who consider themselves to be socialists the world over, not only on principles, but on action as well. We have to make our choice. But we should not try to talk away differences that will continue to exist. For years to come the Socialist Party’s  primary work must be the making of socialists, and, isolated as we are, to some extent we must carry on that work in our own way. We will organise because we are face to face with conditions that require united action of our class at the ballot box which requires a political education acquired only by careful reading and close investigation where we, the working class, can learn the cause of our industrial and economic enslavement and how to free ourselves.

A new type of revolution

The Socialist Party of Great Britain is a working-class party and is therefore concerned to do everything possible to arouse the class it represents from indifference into organised action against the present form of industrial organisation to which can be traced the evils under which the workers suffer to-day. No successful conflict with capitalism can be entered into except it be based upon a clear understanding of the class position.  Upon this basis alone can be built the fighting organisations, political and industrial, of the working-class which by concentrating upon the conquest of political power and the substitution of the common ownership and control of the means of life for the present private ownership thereof, shall achieve the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of the socialist cooperative commonwealth.

For this task the workers must acquire the consciousness which can enable them to do so. This consciousness must comprise, first of all, a knowledge of their class position. They must realise that, while they produce all wealth, their share of it will not, under the present system, be more than sufficient to enable them to reproduce their efficiency as wealth producers. They must realise that also, under the system they will remain subject to all the misery of unemployment, the anxiety of the threat of unemployment, and the deprivations of poverty. They must understand the implications of their position – that the only hope of any real betterment lies in abolishing the social system which reduces them to mere sellers of their labor power, exploited by the capitalists. A class which understands all this is class-conscious. It has only to find the means and methods by which to proceed, in order to become the instrument of revolution and of change .

Class consciousness was never more needed than now. To the socialist, class-consciousness is the breaking-down of all barriers to understanding. Without it, militancy means nothing. The conflict between the classes is more than a struggle for each to gain from the other. The class-conscious worker knows where s/he stands in society. Their interests are opposed at every point to those of the capitalist class. Their cause can only be the cause of revolution for the abolishing of classes. Without that understanding, militancy can mean little. Class-conscious people need no leaders. The single, simple fact which all working people have to learn is that capitalism causes capitalism's problems, so that the remedy – the only remedy – is to abolish capitalism. In that knowledge they must take hold of the powers of government – for one purpose only: that the rule of class by class shall end. Socialism is not a benevolently-administered capitalism: it is a different social system. Reform is no answer, even though at times – rare times – it benefits working people. The reformer has agreed that capitalism shall continue, and is merely trying to alleviate its worst effects. Has poverty been abolished by the reformers? Ask the old, ask the unemployed or the homeless , or the sick. Has life been made more satisfying by the Welfare State?

Marx expected the working class to develop from a mere economic category (a"class in itself" ) into a revolutionary political actor ("class for itself")—but at least the process started even if it did get stuck on route as it were. A "class consciousness" did develop among particular sections of the working class but this did not develop into a revolutionary socialist consciousness. It stopped at trade-unionism and Labourism, the idea and practice of the working class as a class within capitalism but which wanted a better deal within this system, not to replace it with a classless and exploitation-free society. So, even if a working class "for itself" has never developed, a class consciousness of a lesser sort did.
Marx believed as the workers gained more experience of the class struggle and the workings of capitalism, it would become more consciously socialist and democratically organised by the workers themselves. The emergence of socialist understanding out of the experience of the workers could thus be said to be “spontaneous” in the sense that it would require no intervention by people outside the working class to bring it about (not that such people could not take part in this process, but their participation was not essential or crucial). Socialist propaganda and agitation would indeed be necessary but would come to be carried out by workers themselves whose socialist ideas would have been derived from an interpretation of their class experience of capitalism. The end result would be an independent movement of the socialist-minded and democratically organised working class aimed at winning control of political power in order to abolish capitalism. As Marx and Engels put it in The Communist Manifesto:-“the proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority”.

This in fact was Marx’s conception of the workers’ party - a mass democratic movement of the working class with a view to establishing socialism. The self-emancipation of the working class, as advocated by Marx, remains the agenda .

Working class action must be revolutionary. The workers of Britain have common cause with the workers of every other country. They are members of an international class, faced with the same problems, holding the same interests once they are conscious of them. As class consciousness grows amongst the workers in all lands, co-operative action will be planned. It will not stop at the organisation of marches and demonstrations . It will be co-operation to speed the abolition of capitalism.

The Socialist Party does not minimise the necessity and importance of the worker keeping up the struggle to maintain the wage-scale, resisting cuts, etc. If he always laid down to the demands of his exploiters without resistance he would not be worth his salt as a man, or fit for waging the class struggle to put an end to exploitation. More and more of the workers are forced to realise that their interests are opposed to those of the owning and ruling class, in fact that the continuation of this rule spells disaster to society generally. The class war is far from over. It can only end with the dispossession of the owning minority and the consequent disappearance of classes and class-divided society.

The Party of the Revolutionary Cause

Reformists are those who say they are fighting for the workers, but whose aim is limited to reforming the system in order to preserve it. The principal promoters of reformism are paid handsomely for carrying out the dirty work of the class they claim to oppose. Many working people in every corner of the world know that they can solve the fundamental problems of their class only by making proletarian revolution and winning the fight for socialism. The capitalist class live in great splendour by exploiting the working class through the daily robbery of the enormous wealth the workers produce. In contrast to this, intense exploitation, oppression, poverty and misery characterise the lives of the working class. 

What are the fundamental criteria for the existence of capitalist production? How do we recognise it? Capitalism is a system of commodity production, production for the market mediated by a system of monetary exchange, and it is a system in which the actual producers do not own the means of production necessary to turn out a usable product. These means of production are owned by a class of capitalists who buy the labour-power of the producers, paying them only a certain portion of the total value they produce. The most developed and typical form in which producers are paid is by a money wage. The capitalist class, is a small class composed of those who own and control the financial institutions and means of production–the land, raw materials, machines, mines, mills, factories, farms. The working class, is made up of those who are deprived of the ownership of the means of production and therefore are forced to sell their labour power as a commodity to the capitalist class. The working class participates directly in production, transportation, communication, service, agriculture, and commerce. It is the class which creates the wealth of society and from which the capitalists extract surplus value. The working class also encompass the reserve army of unemployed, including old and disabled workers and semi-permanently and permanently unemployed workers forced to live on public assistance.

 Because of its organised and concentrated character at the centres of production, workers are the only class able to mobilise and wage the class struggle against the ruling class. It is the only thoroughly revolutionary class, ideologically, politically, and organisationally. The working class is the most progressive and most revolutionary class ever known in history and stands in the centre of our epoch of the world proletarian revolution. It has the power in its hands to forge a new socialist society out of the ruins of the old capitalist one, and it alone is capable of running society in the interests of the great majority. Working people are the “only consistently revolutionary class because, whether or not they realises it, their social problems cannot be solved short of socialism. They also play a key revolutionary role because of the organisational skills acquired as a result of its collective experience in factories and with mass production. The world's working class has “nothing to lose but its chains and a world to win.” Through its own emancipation, it will break the chains of capital which bind the exploited people of the whole world. 

We know that the day is not far away when workers will find their way to the politics that will sweep from the earth the system which has caused them so much suffering. They will find this task not in the “politics” of the boss parties, but in the party of working class revolution – the Socialist Party.

Socialists understand that the ills of the capitalist economic system will not be eliminated short of the destruction of capitalism. Only the removal of the material basis of man’s exploitation by man, can actually permit us to wage a winning struggle.

What the working class lacks more than anything else is a sense of itself as a class, and of the inherent contradiction between its needs and the needs of the capitalist class. It is precisely this class consciousness which socialists must strive, above all else, to instill in the working class, this consciousness of itself as a class is what can lay the actual basis for a firm and relentless struggle against capitalism. It is abundantly clear that the class struggle has been relegated to one of several movements of mass resistance the women’s movement, the anti-racist campaigns, the environmentalist movement. We will continue to engage with these struggles, help them by linking them up with our fight for socialism.

The Class Struggle

 

Marx observed in 1865 that wage levels can only be "settled by the continuous struggle between capital and labour, the capitalist constantly tending to reduce wages to their physical minimum, and to extend the working day to its physical maximum, while the working man constantly presses in the opposite direction."

Hal Draper later remarked, "To engage in class struggle it is not necessary to 'believe in' the class struggle any more than it is necessary to believe in Newton to fall from an aeroplane. There is no evidence that workers like to struggle any more than anyone else; the evidence is that capitalism compels and accustoms them to do so."

Unlike peasants in a capitalist society the proletariat as the most exploited class divorced from the means of production and therefore condemned to live by selling the only commodity they are left with, their bare hands, or their labour-power to the owners of capital. Therefore they are the most revolutionary class. They are located in the most progressive sectors of the economy i.e. large-scale machine production in urban areas and working together in large bodies under one roof. For that reason,  they are the most organised, the most disciplined and therefore the most revolutionary class in capitalist society. And as Karl Marx observed, having lost their property to the capitalists they have nothing to lose in the struggle but their chains. They see for themselves that they toil and live in deplorable conditions and yet they are the creators of the country's wealth which accumulates in the hands of a few rich people.  More than any other class, they are interested in the abolition of private property and exploitation of one person by another and the eventual collective ownership and management of the economy by workers' councils or soviets. This makes them the most revolutionary class once their class consciousness is awakened. Their class interests are irreconcilable with those of capitalism.

In a society of class antagonism, there are basically two socially opposing types of people - the capitalist exploiter and the exploited working person. This polarisation is sharper in advanced capitalist economies where the bourgeoisie regards the working class as an object for the extraction of surplus-value - the source of their profits. The workers are reduced to cogs in the machinery of capitalist production and denied all rights. However, it is important to note that in a capitalist society the workers have actually accomplished a great deal. Due primarily to their efforts, massive productive forces have been built up, which make it possible to create unprecedented material and spiritual wealth for the benefit of all. The first condition, especially in advanced capitalist countries,  for building a society of equals in which the workers themselves become the aim and purpose of production has already been created.

Unions are important because of the centrality of the working class to the larger struggle for socialism. Karl Marx was the first socialist among his contemporaries to recognise this important role of the working-class and therefore trade unions, as the only leading force in the struggle for a socialist revolution. Utopian socialists before Marx had dismissed unions as irrelevant and some of them even opposed strike action. Marx understood the absolute importance at all times of organising this class to unite as a class against their capitalist enemy.

The trade unions are workers' front line of defence against their employers under capitalism. But as vehicles for struggle, they are also crucial to the future self-emancipation of the working class. But there is also a contradiction: unions both negotiate the terms of exploitation of workers under capitalism and also provide the vehicle for the struggle that can prepare the working class for revolution. Capitalism forces workers into competition with each other - native vs. foreign-born, skilled vs. unskilled, and so on-exploiting every opportunity to keep workers divided. Organising into unions, which present the opportunity for the collective struggle against the employers, thereby reducing competition between workers. Marx and Engels wrote in the Communist Manifesto, "This organisation of the proletarians into a class, and consequently into a political party, is continually being upset again by the competition between the workers themselves. But it ever rises up again, stronger, firmer, mightier."

In the US the number of strikes fell to their lowest point on record in 2009 and to the second-lowest in 2010. These figures demonstrate the extent to which labour leaders have been unwilling to use labour's most effective weapon, the strike. Decades of concessionary bargaining-at first, claimed to be a temporary phenomenon-have made wage and benefit cuts routine aspects of union negotiations, thereby enabling the deterioration of working-class living standards. Conservative trade-union leaders are de facto agents of the employing class trying to hide behind the mask of trade-union neutrality in order to divert the workers from the path of the class war onto a path of collaboration with the capitalist. Economics and politics are inseparably linked. In practice, trade union neutrality amounts to supporting the bosses.

History has shown that the rate of union membership corresponds to the rise and decline in the level of class struggle. If the current balance of class forces can only be reversed through a revival of class struggle, then the key challenge facing union activists is how to transform their unions into fighting organisations. For Marxists, this necessarily entails, step by step, strengthening the fighting capacity of workers in general, and union workers in particular.

The working class must now conquer capitalism. And history has bestowed the role of conquering capitalist society squarely on the shoulders of the working class - they are the undisputed 'grave-diggers' of capitalism. It is therefore totally inconceivable that this class can be denied the right to intervene in politics to liberate themselves and society at large. Every social and political movement tending in that direction should be aided by the trade unions. Unions must be champions of the entire class and should not form themselves into corporate bodies only of their members, shutting out non-members. It is their duty to help organise those who cannot organise themselves easily and protect the interests of the worst paid trades like agricultural workers.

 Experience bears testimony to the fact that trade union involvement in broader struggles has a salutary or beneficial effect on the working class than being stuck in the narrow and parochial rut. The trade union movement must fight to bring the marginalised into the mainstream, and the weakest into more advantageous positions in society. By their action they must demonstrate that they are not using their organised strength only to guard their interests, but for all the downtrodden.

Today working-class consciousness has to develop to a point where they are in the process of becoming "a class for-itself" i.e. a class consciousness working class which enables them to see their real class enemy as capitalism.

The Reason The Socialist Party Exists

 

Vast changes are taking place in the world. Those who try to investigate what is going on around them are fobbed off by politicians with trivial phrases and meaningless soundbites.  Too often our reaction is to be turn  off by politics altogether, to becoming completely cynical to frequently feel powerless and to sink into apathy. The Labour Party is committed to an all-out effort to make capitalism work indefinitely.  It does not see a revolutionary transformation of society as the way to solve the problems capitalism has shown itself incapable of solving. It does not want power to pass from the existing state to a revolutionary society set up by the workers to dispossess the capitalist class and create a class-free society. But there is no escape from the problems of our time. We cannot remain passive about issues which affect our daily lives. The slogan calling for unity neglects the vital question: unity for what purpose? It glosses over the class struggle and the need for the workers to increase their own understanding and become conscious that their class has the power to carry through the necessary revolutionary transformation of society.

In every epoch the class commanding the means of production was the governing class. In the Middle Ages, before the manufacture of commodities, the land-owning barons were the dominant class. In this age of commodity production the owners of factories, machinery, raw materials, and banks, constitute the capitalist class which is the dominant class. As methods of production change, those interested in the new methods find their development restricted by the laws and customs framed by the ruling class. Gradually, the class that depends for its rise to power upon the development of the new methods of production grows in numbers and influence, and assumes definite opposition to the existing order. Ultimately the ruling class is driven from power, and the control of society passes into the hands of the class that represents the new methods of production. These now reconstruct society in order to allow the free development of the system, favourable to themselves. In this way the capitalist class gained power, overthrew the landed aristocracy, and instituted constitutional government. The change may be rapid, as in the French Revolution, or slow as in England, where the struggle between the rising capitalist class and the landed aristocracy commenced with the Cromwellian Revolution and did not terminate in the victory of the middle class until the passing of the Reform Act.

In each form of society, there have developed certain antagonisms: the struggle of classes has arisen and created the movement for the overthrow of the existing order. The change does not come from without, but from within, and as a result of conditions created in the old order. Modern capitalism is subject to the same laws as the preceding forms of society. The capitalists’ exploitation of the propertyless worker engenders the class antagonism. The methods of production have changed from simple individualist manufacture to complex machine production. Production is no longer individual, but co-operative. Already the foundations of the new order are laid. The superstructure will be raised when the passage from individual to co-operative production has been completed by the cooperative ownership of the means of production in place of private ownership. We say that the only class—as a class—that is interested in this change is the working class. Socialism, therefore, must come through the medium of the working-class action. Whatever its faults, it is this working-class alone that can take power and establish the Cooperative Commonwealth. It must, of course, possess the necessary ardour before it can achieve this objective.

Marx did not intend his message for select disciples. Marx viewed the working class as a whole. From his vast store of knowledge, he deduced that the workers, by their adoption of the principles he had enunciated, would fulfil his anticipations of the form the working-class movement would ultimately take. To Marx, the workers when they become socialists do not become different from the rest of the working class. Their change in thought is evidence of transformation in the working-class movement. They remain of the workers, struggling with them for emancipation. There are ‘socialists’ who pose as superior but, in any case, the advance of socialism is governed by the progress of socialist thought among the workers. The current socialist movement of today cannot bring about socialism. 

The Co-operative Commonwealth will be inaugurated by the majority action of the mass of workers. To assert the contrary is a denial of the very principles Marxists support. Steadily the workers move along the road to socialism. Circumstances compel them to take that road. Economic laws operate whether they are known or not, but if we understand their operation we can bend them to our purpose pad assist society along the course it tends to travel. 

As a Socialist Party, we must bring this knowledge to the workers and what tactics must be pursued to that end. The necessity for political action is essential. Whenever the power of the governing class asserts itself, then the workers must fight. The State is the political expression of the dominant class, and since that dominant class uses the machinery of the State—law, justice, coercive forces—to maintain its own privileges and to impose its will upon the labouring mass, the workers contest their claims by political action. The distinction between political and industrial action is false; they are the two poles of the same movement. The reason why some participate in the every-day struggle in the industrial field, and yet decline to take a part in political action, is that they regard industrial action as more important than political. That belief is without justification. If the political movement is the pole, opposite to the industrial movement, the standard of political activity is governed by the level of industrial activity. When a worker votes for a Socialist Party candidate he or she votes against the whole of the capitalist class; votes for one's own class without regard for craft or industrial divisions.  The Socialist Party does not act for a particular group, but for the whole working class. 

The Labour Party is not a socialist party. Socialist parties are an integral part of the working-class movement. They are the centre from which propaganda is disseminated; members of the trade unions should be the agents of the socialist parties. The stronger the socialist body the better can it permeate the working-class movement. Socialist parties give imagination, and vitality to the workers’ movement.

The nationalist smokescreen

To advance toward socialism, the working class must develop its consciousness of being a class with common interests radically opposed to those of the capitalist class. It must also understand that nationalism serve the interests of the capitalists, not the interests of the workers. To hang on to the shirt-tails of nationalists and drag workers along behind the Left Nationalist have once again come up with classic reformist ideas that oppose real political education, education and the propagation of socialist ideas. It is a strategy that capitulates totally before the task of education is carried out. A newly empowered Scottish capitalist class would certainly have no interest in raising workers’ wages, nor improving working conditions. On the contrary, they would call on their workers to tighten their belts even more in the name of the new nation. The Scottish workers would have, for all intents and purposes, won the right to self-determination but at the cost of strengthening the Scottish employers and putting off the socialist revolution far into the future. Our enemy is the same as that of the British working class as a whole: the capitalists. Independence, instead of uniting the working class against the bosses, divides them from the rest of the working class. It delays the socialist revolution by advocating unity with the Scottish employing class.


Scottish independence pushed by the Left is shown up for what it really is, a mirage and an illusion intended to attract Scottish workers to tie them to the interests of the native ruling class. Looked at concretely, one by one, the so-called advantages that workers would gain from separation go up in smoke. And the disadvantages are great: holding back the achievement of the working class’s basic aim, the capture of political power from the current ruling class. The working class would be sacrificing its struggle for socialism, which is the only way to do away with exploitation, in return for a few crumbs obtained by a change of constitution. The present debate over the constitutional status will result in no substantial solutions to the pressing problems of the daily life of the working people. The chief promoters of nationalism have no intention of changing the relationship of class forces. They will act to protect the interests of Big Business on which they ultimately rest, and they must move against the struggles of the exploited class. Separatists will not offer a challenge to the power of the corporations. A sovereign Scottish government will be unable to develop policies genuinely independent of the capitalist class. The working class are fated to be shoved aside. There are no grounds to believe that the working class, by adopting independence, would advance its interests in any way, in terms either of its class consciousness or of its ultimate objective of building socialism. The Left Nationalists are totally incapable and unwilling to provide such a revolutionary socialist alternative, for pursuing its policy of peaceful collaboration with the SNP, it has in fact given up the perspective of struggle for the socialist transformation. Their tactics are foredoomed to failure.


What progressive ends would be achieved by the secession of the Scots from the Union? The answer is obviously none. The Scottish people have everything to gain and nothing to lose by rejecting the line of nationalism. We must refuse to become the cannon fodder for nationalists. The ravings of the Left Nationalists contribute little but division and confusion among workers. They ally with the bosses yet don the garb of socialism in order to appear radical. For sure, many Scots are fed up with present-day conditions. But a good portion, though, are geared towards the forward march of labour. They see there is no other choice, that the best possible future for them is to ally themselves with other members of the working class in order to carry on a common struggle with them. Only the working class is capable of overthrowing the capitalist system and only a solid working-class base can accomplish the social revolution.


Whatever twists and turns lie down the road in the fight for socialism, one thing is certain: the success of that struggle depends on achieving the greatest possible unity of the working class, it is utterly ridiculous to argue that the working class ought to divide itself into two different countries in order to accomplish this unity. It is completely absurd to justify this with the false argument, disproven many times, that the battle for socialism would be easier if it were led by a more nationally “pure” and homogeneous working class. Working class unity is a must right now if effective resistance is to be mounted to the crisis measures imposed by the capitalists. Unity is necessary to stand up against all the attacks on our democratic rights. Unity is the key in putting an end to the discrimination suffered by the oppressed nations. The working class faces a powerful and aggressive enemy which is solidly united despite the real contradictions within its ranks. The people’s forces are not going to win by dividing themselves. Those gentlemen who dress up as socialists in order to push nationalism in the working class are the objective allies of the capitalist class. The left nationalists find themselves in the camp of those promoting division of the working class.


Workers in Scotland have a difficult task ahead of them. It is to unite to resist the attacks of the employers with greater and greater strength and eventually to oust them from political power. The problems of workers will not be solved in the framework of any form of the nation-state. The fate of Scottish workers is irrevocably bound up with the fate of the rest of the British, European and World workers. Socialism is the order of the day. Workers all across the world can be united against their common enemy, against the bosses’ class and their state We can end their rotten system and build a new system for workers – socialism. A divided international working class, split and shackled by nationalism can never build its strength to challenge the ruling class world-wide, and crush the entire capitalist system of exploitation, racism and war, once and for all. Independence, for Scottish workers simply spells increased exploitation. Separation will weaken the struggle of the entire British working class for socialism by dividing its ranks. Supporting Scottish independence in the name of socialism is a monumental hoax. It flows from the same kind of logic that leads others to preach nationalisation as the cure for all our ills.