We need more than the union

Marx highlighted the weak spot of all trade unionism. What every worker must realise is that through trade union struggle we are not fighting the causes which is capitalism but only its symptoms. We are fighting against the effects of the system as Marx points out, and not against the system itself. What trade union struggles really do is to fight to improve the conditions of the working class within the framework of the capitalist system. They do not challenge capitalism itself. What all workers must understand is that their misery is due to exploitation carried on by the capitalist class. Trade unionism merely attempts to lessen this exploitation. It does not fight to end exploitation i.e. to end the capitalist system and replace it by socialism. This is the fatal limitation of trade union struggles.

The Socialist Party does not oppose trade union struggles nor do its members refuse to participate in them. 

As Marx wrote in 1881:

“..it is through the action of Trades Unions that the law of wages is enforced as against the employers, and that the workpeople of any well-organised trade are enabled to obtain, at least approximately, the full value of the working power which they hire to their employer; and that, with the help of State laws, the hours of labour are made at least not to exceed too much that maximum length beyond which the working power is prematurely exhausted. This, however, is the utmost Trades Unions, as at present organised, can hope to obtain...”

So trade unions are vitally essential to organise workers and help them to fight for their day to day demands. As long as the capitalist system exists, employers will always try to take back what they have been forced to concede. They will continually try to step up the exploitation of the working class in order to boost their profits. Until the workers get rid of the capitalist system itself, the cause of all the injustices they face, they will constantly have to take up their struggles over and over again.

Marx’s advice to the workers was:

“Instead of the conservative motto, ‘A fair day’s wages for a fair day’s work,’ they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword, ‘Abolition of the wages system’.” (Value, Price and Profit.)

For socialists this is a guide to action, to present the socialist solution, to raise the issue of socialism, to speak and act in terms of socialism and to fight for the socialist transformation of the economic, social and political system. The Socialist Party does not wish to “capture” the trade unions, nor to exploit them for the support of principles in which they do not believe or of men with whom they do not agree. Neither do we suggest that we should “fight” the unions as some Left Communists argue should happen. Nor do we adhere to the idea that we should create rival “socialist” trade union organisations to them as have the old Communist Party and Socialist Labour Party once did. Such efforts proved futile and only further weakened the power of existing unions. The Socialist Party has no interest in opposing, antagonising, or disrupting the trade unions.

What we wish to do is to inspire its members with a consciousness of the reality and magnitude of the class struggle in which, whether they will it or not, they are engaged. The fact is that unions are mass organisations which bring together workers of all political tendencies, including workers who are still under the domination of the prevalent status quo ideology and still have faith in the political parties of the capitalists. Despite this, unions have everything to gain from remaining united. Otherwise their battles will end up in defeat. 

Another name that Marx and Engels often used for a socialist society was “free association of producers”.  Simply describing a world without private property or wages system, however important these might be, misses the point. Marx’s basic conceptions was of universal human emancipation, of a way of living which he called "truly human". Communist society is based on the free association of all individuals who work together to produce the goods necessary for their collective well-being. All will work according to their capacities and their needs will be fully satisfied. Thus, individuals will no longer be governed by the division of labour and the divisions between city and countryside will disappear. The expropriation of the capitalists and the socialisation of the means of production will lead directly to the abolition of society based on class division . The abolition of classes will in turn lead to the withering away of the State, and its extinction, for the State is not, and can never be, anything other than the instrument of dictatorship of one class over others.

What to do and not what to do

The trade unions are the organising centres of the working class, the most important mass organisations of workers. Trade unions first arose in order to eliminate the existing competition among the workers. They arose as organising centers that provided the workers with their initial lessons in class struggle. The solidarity learned in the course of the trade union struggle was a school of socialism. The immediate aims of the first trade unions were to win the basic economic demands of the workers, through collective action. The boss tries to squeeze as much profit out of the worker as he can. The worker tries to wring as close to a living wage out of the boss as he or she can. And if the workers stopped struggling, they’d just be squeezed more, that’s all. That’s why there’s a class struggle.

Immediately it became apparent that the function of the trade unions was not only to fight on the economic front, but to fight for the abolition of wage slavery itself, to fight to end the rule of capitalism. We want to get rid of the class struggle too. We’re going to do it by getting rid of the profit system, which exists only because there is a class of exploiters and a class of the exploited.

Many of the fundamental rights of the working class today were a result of the early trade union struggles, such as the eight hour day. Today this advance is being eroded by the capitalists. But certainly, in response to the austerity cuts of the recession,  the class struggle is sharpening. The storm clouds of great battles ahead are filling the air. The task of Socialist Party is to assist  linking these with the aim of our movement–the establishment of  socialism. This task can only be accomplished through patient and careful work, challenging any viewpoint which denies the necessity of trade unions, or that belittles the nature of the class struggle to be waged, and suggests trade unions engage in the line of class collaboration.

To increase profits and expand investments, capitalists have to pay workers lower wages and benefits and keep down the expenses needed to provide safe and healthy conditions. Therefore, workers have to fight both to maintain any gains they have won and make any new advances.

As socialists, our approach recognises that the class interests of workers and capitalists are in basic conflict. We are also concerned that working people do not narrow their attention just to the economic struggle (wages, benefits, working conditions) in their particular workplace. When working people take an active role in struggling with major social and political issues they increase their strength and help both themselves and all oppressed people worldwide. This means taking stands that offer solutions for discrimination, war, pollution and other problems that nobody can really afford to ignore.

There is no kind of labour unionism by itself which is going to provide a solution to the exploitation of the working class. Unions helps to strengthen the working class’ position against the capitalists, and therefore it can contribute to building a  movement of the working class to overthrow the capitalist system and construct a socialist society. Only in socialism do working people have the means to collectively decide the direction their society will take and how they will participate in it.

 As socialists we believe society’s main problem is the capitalist system itself and always uphold that the only real solution is socialism and political rule by working people, not capitalists. A socialist party fights for the interests of the working class as a whole and doesn’t take a narrow sectional view of just looking out for the interests of a few trades. A socialist party struggles for the long-term, political interests of working people, and not just a few short-term economic gains. Socialists also recognise that international borders should not be allowed to divide workers from other working people around the world because we are all fighting one international capitalist system.

Of course, not everyone who calls him or herself a socialists is one. Some leftists who may have the best of intentions cannot be considered socialists because they have the wrong idea of what a socialist society is and advocate the wrong strategy for making a revolution. Too many left-wing activists engage in adventurist acts as publicity stunts to gain attention primarily for their own organisation. They try to be impressive to other working people by striking a “militant” pose, but often their reckless actions just make them end up looking irresponsible and foolish. Typically, a group like this overestimates the conditions that could create a revolutionary situation because it needs to justify its adventurist actions because it has an over-inflated view of its own importance. They cause unnecessary divisions among the working class, and it ends up strengthening the position of the repressive political forces. What is most serious is that it tends to fan anti-socialism by discrediting genuine socialists in the eyes of the working class.

Socialism Is The Issue (2/4)

PART TWO

The working class are learning. They are beginning to spell solidarity and to pronounce socialism. Our propaganda is one of education to teach workers to unite and vote together as a class in support of the Socialist Party, the party that represents them as a class. Organised labour does not lie down at the command of  Prime Ministers or Presidents.  No strike has even been lost, and there can be no defeat for the labour movement. No matter how disastrous the day of battle has been, it has been worth its price, and only the scars remain to bear testimony that the movement is invincible and that no mortal wound can be inflicted upon it. The union has from its inception taught, however imperfectly, the fundamental need of solidarity; it has inspired hope in the defeated and despairing worker. The union has fought the battles of the worker upon a thousand fields, and though defeated often, rallied again and again. The union was first to outline the lesson that the worker needs to learn, that only through the collective interest and welfare of his or her class and embracing our class as a whole is permanent change of conditions possible. Although only vaguely and imperfectly accomplished the union has promoted the class-conscious solidarity of the working-class.

Perhaps the trades-union movement has in some respects proved a disappointment, but it may not on this account be repudiated as a failure. The worst that be said of it is that it has not kept up with changing conditions and situations but there are reasons for this as most know. The trades-union movement of the present day has enemies bent upon destroying it or reducing it to impotency. Step by step the writ of legal injunction has invaded the domain of trades-unionism, limiting its influence, curtailing its powers, sapping its strength and undermining its foundations and this has been done by the courts in the name of justice but at the behest of the indusrrial oligarchs and financial plutocrats. Court orders have been issued restraining the trades-union  members from striking, from boycotting, from voting funds to strikes, from walking on the public highway, from gathering together in public spaces, from asking others not to scab and  from communicating with those who had taken or were about to take their jobs. In fact the law has been evoked hindering unions from doing anything and everything, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the employing class in their unalienable right to run things to suit themselves. The law have found in favour of the bosses, leaving the workers and their unions defenceless. The court system is under the control of employers, and so shamelessly  perverted it reveals the class character of our capitalist government and leads to the inevitable conclusion that the labour question is also a political question and that the working class must organise their political power to put an end to class rule forever.

The members of a trade-union should learn the true importance and discover the labour movement means  infinitely more than a paltry increase in wages and the strikes necessary to secure it; that while it engages to do all that possibly that can be done to better the working conditions of its members, its higher object must be to overthrow the capitalist system, abolish wage-slavery and achieve the freedom of the whole working class (and all mankind.)
The trade-unions, however, is not, and can not become, a political machine and nor can it be used for political purposes. The Socialist Party has no intention to convert the trades-union into a political party and would oppose any such attempt on the part of others. The important thing to impress upon the mind of trade unionists is to do their own thinking. Unions are an economic organisation with distinct economic functions and as such is a part, a necessary part, but a part only of the labour movement. It has its own sphere of activity, its own platform and is its own master within its economic limitations.

The socialist movement is its political side and  the Socialist Party expresses the political power of the labour movement. The class conscious worker uses both economic and political power in the interest of his or her class. The struggle between labour and capital is a class struggle; that the working class are in a great majority, but divided, some in trades-unions and some out of them, some in one political party and some in another; that because they are divided they are helpless and must submit to being robbed of what their labour produces; that they must unite their class in the trades-union on the one hand and in a socialist party on the other hand; that industrially and politically they must act together as a class against the capitalist class and that this struggle is a class struggle, and that any worker who deserts the union in a strike and goes to the other side is a scab, and any worker who deserts the Socialist Party on election day and goes over to the enemy is a traitor to their class. Capitalism can only rule by corrupt means and its politics are essentially the reflection of its debasing economic character. He who controls my bread controls my head.

The capitalists are far more thoroughly organised than the workers. In the first place, capitalists are comparatively few in number, while the workers number millions. Next, the capitalists are men of financial means and resources, and can buy the best brains and ability the market affords. Then again, they own the factories, the communications, the transport and retail stores and all the jobs that are attached to them, and this not only gives them tremendous advantage in the struggle, but makes them for the time the absolute masters of the situation. The workers, on the other hand, are poor as a rule but they are in an overwhelming majority. In a word, they have the power, but are not conscious of it. This then is the task of activists and militants; to make them conscious of the power of their class, or class-conscious workers.

The working class alone does all the work, has created and  produced the world’s wealth, constructed its roads, drives the trucks, laid its rails and operates its trains, spanned the rivers with bridges and tunnelled the mountains.  The working class alone - and by the working class we mean all useful workers, all who by the labour of their hands or the effort of their brains increase knowledge and add to the intellectual wealth of society - the working class alone is essential to society and therefore the only class that can survive in the world-wide struggle for freedom.

The Socialist Party is to the workers politically what the trades-union is to them industrially; the former is the party of their class, while the latter is the union of their trade or profession. The difference between them is that while the trades-union is confined to occupation, the Socialist Party embraces the entire working class, and while the union is limited to bettering conditions under the wage system for its members. The Socialist Party is organised to conquer the political power, wipe out the wage system. Trades-union and the Socialist Party, the economic and political wings of the labour movement, should not only not be in conflict, but act together, in harmony, in every struggle, whether it be on the one field or the other, in the strike or at the ballot box. The main thing is that in every such struggle the workers shall be united and be no more guilty of scabbing on their party than on their union, by voting a pro- capitalist on election day and turning the working class over to capitalist misrule. Would a worker ever think of voting in the union to turn it over to his employers and have it run in the interest of management?


To do its part in the class struggle the trade union need no more go into politics than the Socialist Party enter into the trade unions. Each has its place and its functions. The union deals with work issues and the Party deals with politics. Trade unionism is by no means the solution of the workers’ problem, nor is it the goal of the labour struggle. It is merely a line of defence within the capitalist system. Its existence and its struggles are necessitated only by the existence and predatory nature of capitalism. Until the workers shall become a clearly defined socialist movement, standing for and moving toward the unqualified co-operative commonwealth they will only play into the hands of their exploiters. The socialist must point this out in the right way. He is not to do this by seeking to commit trade-union bodies to the principles of socialism. Resolutions or commitments of this sort accomplish little good. Nor should socialists be  meddling with the details or the machinery of the trade-unions. Or trying to commit socialism to trade-unionism, and vice versa,  trade unionism to socialism. It is better to have the trade-unions do their separate distinctive work, as the workers’ defence against the encroachments of capitalism and  giving unqualified support and sympathy to the struggles of the organised workers to sustain them economically. But let the socialists also build up the character and strength of the socialist movement as a political force, that it shall command the respect and confidence of the worker, irrespective of union obligations.

 It is imperative we keep in mind the difference between the two so that neither shall handicap the other. The socialist movement, as a political development of the workers for their economic emancipation, is one thing; the trade-union development, as an economic defense of the workers within the capitalist system, is another thing. Let us not interfere with the internal affairs of the trade unions, or seek to have them become distinctively political bodies in themselves. The unions can never become a political machine, but they must recognise the necessity for a united political party. Let socialists attend to the development of the socialist political movement as the channel and power by which labour is to come to its emancipation and its commonwealth. It is of vital importance to the trades-union that its members be class-conscious, that they understand the class struggle and their duty as union men on the political field, so that in every move that is made they will have the goal in view, and while taking advantage of every opportunity to secure concessions and enlarge their economic advantage, they will at the same time unite at the ballot box, not only to back up the economic struggle of the trades-union, but to finally wrest the government from capitalist control and establish socialism. Declaring  opposition to the capitalist system of private ownership of the means of production, and urging upon the working class the necessity for working class political action is as far as the trade union organisations need to go. If you were to use your economic organisation for political purposes you would disrupt it, you would wreck it.

The mainstream parties have sounded a note of alarm at the so-called “apathy” of the voters, and there is reason for their fear. Unintelligible sound-bites from campaign spin-doctors will no longer answer the insistent questionings of a slowly awakening electorate. The workers are refusing to get enthusiastic over the many fake election issues, for all these dwarf into insignificance before the very practical question of “What are you going to do about the problem of the unemployed”? To which questions the Tories and Labour can answer only, “Who knows!” The Socialist Party is the only one that gives the worker a practical and logical answer to his elemental question.

If you have no right to work you have no right to life because you can only live by work. And if you live in a system that deprives you of the right to work, that system denies you the right to live. No work, no food and all this in the shadow of the abundance these very workers have created. In capitalism a  worker can only work on condition that he or she finds somebody who will grant them permission to work but for just enough of what his or her labour produces to keep them in sufficient fit state and working order. Why should any worker need to beg for work? Why be forced to surrender to anybody any part of what his or her labour produces? No matter whether you have studied this economic question or not, you cannot have failed to observe that society has been sharply divided into classes into a capitalist class upon the one hand, into a working class upon the other hand. The capitalist has become a profit-taking parasite. The capitalists are absolutely unnecessary; they have no part in the process of production – not the slightest.

So long as the means of production are privately or state owned, so long as they are operated for the profit of the capitalist or a bureaucracy, the working class will be exploited, millions will be reduced to want, some of them driven to be vagabonds and criminals, and this condition will prevail in spite of anything that organised labour can do to the contrary.

What is it that keeps the working class in subjection? What is it that is responsible for their exploitation and for all of the ills they suffer? Just one thing, the working class have not yet learned how to unite and act together. The capitalists and their retinue have managed during all these years to keep the working class divided, and as long as the working class is divided it will be helpless. It is only when the working class learn (and they are learning ) and by very bitter experience to unite and to act together, especially on election day, that there is any hope for emancipation.

 We have now no effective revolutionary organisation of the workers along the lines of this class struggle, and that is the demand of this time. The capitalists are combined against you. They are reducing wages. They have control of the courts. They are doing everything they can to destroy your power. You have got to follow their example. You have got to unify your forces. You have got to stand together shoulder to shoulder on the economic and political fields and then you will make substantial progress toward emancipation.

How we are Different (1/4)

Some critics of the Socialist Party find its position on having an political organisation leader-free naive and Utopian. Some accuse the Socialist Party of being deliberately mendacious by denying that it has an Executive Committee as well as “leading” members such as those who have in-depth understanding and good communication skills who acquire more influence within our organisation with individual qualities such as political insight and who possess more forceful personalities and stronger commitment than its “ordinary” members.

To begin with, policy decisions are made by conference and then by a party referendum of the entire memberhip and not the Executive Committee whose remit is to put into action the decisions of the members. An EC that is not even permitted to submit resolutions to conference. All conference decisions have to be ratified by a referendum of the whole membership. Our General Secretary has no position of power or authority over any other member being simply a dogsbody. There is a crucial difference between electing delegates and representatives. Delegates only have as much power as is mandated to them and can be recalled. Representatives have power abdicated to them wholesale. Mandating delegates, voting on resolutions and membership polls are democratic practices for ensuring that the members of an organisation control that organisation – and as such key procedures in any organisation genuinely seeking socialism.

Critics of the Socialist Party misunderstand our position.

Writers or speakers are NOT leaders. Their function is to spread knowledge and understanding, as teachers. Quite different from that we must have leaders (great men) to direct their followers (blind supporters) into a socialist society. Socialism is not the result of blind faith, followers, or, by the same token, vanguard parties. Despite some very charismatic writers and speakers in the past, no personality has held undue influence over the SPGB. Simply check the two published histories of the Party to see on just how many occasions and on how many issues those so-called leaders have not gained a majority at conferences or in referendums. 

We actually have a test for membership. This does not mean that the SPGB has set itself up as an intellectual elite into which only those well-versed in Marxist scholarship may enter. One purpose of it is to place all members on an even basis. The SPGB’s reason is to ensure that only conscious socialists enter its ranks, for, once admitted, all members are equal and it would clearly not be in the interest of the Party to offer equality of power to those who are not able to demonstrate equality of basic socialist understanding. Once a member, he or she have the same rights as the oldest member to sit on any committee, vote, speak, and have access to all information. Thanks to this test all members are conscious socialists and there is genuine internal democracy, and of that we are fiercely proud.

Consider what happens when people join other groups which don’t have this test.The new applicant has to be approved as being “acceptable”. The individual is therefore judged by the group according to a range of what might be called “credential indicators”. Hard work (often, paper-selling) and obedience by new members is the main criterion of trustworthiness in the organisation. In these hierarchical, “top-down” groups the leaders strive at all costs to remain as the leadership , and reward only those with proven commitment to the “party line” with preferential treatment, more responsibility and more say. New members who present the wrong indicators remain peripheral to the party structure, and finding themselves unable to influence decision-making at any level, eventually give up and leave, often embittered by the hard work they put in and the hollowness of the party’s claims of equality and democracy.

Socialism can only be a fully democratic society in which everybody will have an equal say in the ways things are run. This means that it can only come about democratically, both in the sense of being the expressed will of the working class and in the sense of the working class being organised democratically – without leaders, but with mandated delegates – to achieve it. In rejecting these procedures what is being declared is that the working class should not organise itself democratically. Indeed we are critical of trade unions but we are also supportive of them.

The SPGB has always insisted that the structures and tactics of organisations that the working class create to combat the class war will be there own decision and will necessarily be dependent on particular situations. Again a read of our actual history would reveal that unlike other organisations such as the Socialist Labour Party (SLP) or Communist Party(CPGB) we have never promoted the idea of forming separate trade unions. The SPGB avoided the mistake of the SLP – and of the CPGB during the “Third Period” after 1929 – of “dual unionism”, i.e. of trying to form “revolutionary” unions to rival the existing “reformist” unions (though some SPGBers have been involved, as individuals, in breakaway unions.

The working class get the unions, and the leadership, it deserves. Just as a king is only a king because he is obeyed, so too are union leaders only union leaders because they are followed. To imagine they lead is to imbue them with mystical powers within themselves, and set up a phantasm of leadership that exactly mirror images the same phantasm as our masters believe. So long as the workers themselves are content to deal with such a union system, and its leaders, then such a union system and its leaders will remain, and will have to react to the expectations of the members. The way to industrial unions, or socialist unions, or whatever, is not through the leadership of the unions. The unions will always reflect the nature of their memberships, and until their membership change, they will not change. Unions are neither inherently reactionary, nor inherently revolutionary. The only way to change unions is not through seizing or pressurising the leadership, but through making sure that they have a committed membership, a socialist membership. We countered the syndicalist case “The Mines to the Miners!” or “The Railways to the Railwaymen!” by pointing out the socialists want to abolish the sectional ownership of the means of life, no matter who compose the sections, and not reinforce it.

The Socialist Party is not antagonistic to the trade unions under present conditions, even though they have not a revolutionary basis but we are most hostile to the mis-leading by the trade union leaders and against the ignorance of the rank and file which make such mis-leading possible. Workers must come to see through the illusion that all that is needed in the class war are good generals. Sloganising leaders making militant noises are powerless in the face of a system which still has majority support – or at least the acquiescence – of the working class. It would be wrong to write off the unions as anti-working-class organisations. The union has indeed tended to become an institution apart from its members; but the policy of a union is still influenced by the views of its members. It may be a truism but a union is only as strong as its members.

Most unions have formal democratic constitutions which provide for a wide degree of membership participation and democratic control. In practice however, these provisions are sometimes ineffective and actual control of many unions is in the hands of a well-entrenched full-time leadership. It is these leaders who frequently collaborate with the State and employers in the administration of capitalism; who get involved in supporting political parties and governments which act against the interest of the working class.

Socialists from the SPGB take part in every struggle in the economic field to improve conditions. We are as militant as anybody else. The SPGBer is involved in the economic struggle by the fact that we are members of the working class which naturally resists capital. But this is not the same thing as stating that the Socialist Party engages in activity for higher wages and better conditions. This is not the function of a socialist party. We recognise the necessity of workers’ solidarity in the class struggle against the capitalist class, and rejoice in every victory for the workers to assert their economic power. But to struggle for higher wages and better conditions is not revolutionary in any true sense of the word; and the essential weapons in this struggle are not inherently revolutionary either. It demands the revolutionising of the workers themselves. If there were more revolutionary workers in the unions—and in society generally—then the unions and the host of other community organisations would have a more revolutionary outlook.

This does not mean that we say workers should sit back and do nothing, the struggle over wages and conditions must go on. But it becomes clear that this is a secondary, defensive activity. Participation in the class struggle does not automatically make workers class-conscious. Militancy on the industrial field is just that and does not necessarily lead to political militancy, but ebbs and flows as labour market conditions change. The real struggle is to take the means of wealth production and distribution into the common ownership.

We don’t support reformists, either when they genuinely but mistakenly believe that a minimum wage can be tripled, pensions doubled and a massive public works programme for paid from increased taxes on profits implemented under capitalism. Or because they are practising the Machiavellian Trotskyist tactic of “transitional demands”, of trying to lead workers in reformist struggles which they (but not the workers) know are unachievable in the hope that when these reforms are not achieved the workers will turn to them who as a vanguard will lead them in an assault on the state, overthrow it and set up state capitalism.

We convey the truth: that capitalism can never be made to work in their interest and that the only way out is the establishment of socialism as a system of society based on the common ownership and democratic control of productive resources, production solely and directly for use and distribution on the principle of “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs”.

Struggle to survive

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 airplane. 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 accumulate 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 have 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 defense 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 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 presents the opportunity for collective struggle against the employers, thereby reduces 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 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 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.
Adapted from here and here 

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.

We are The Socialist Party

The Socialist Party purpose is straightforward, and we do not hide it. We want to re-establish the genuine meaning of socialism. The socialist movement is a project for revolutionary change. Socialists want to overthrow today’s society based on exploitation, and build a new world where ordinary people have control over their lives and communities. The agent for this change is the working people themselves. Socialists seek to empower working people to change the world while trade unions are organisations for working people to defend their interests. An overlap of purpose is obvious. Capitalism is a system that serves to exploit. This exploitation changes and develops over time. To challenge capitalist exploitation, it is important for trade unions to be in all sectors of the economy. When workers are organised they can exercise their collective power by going on strike or refusing to over-time or working-to-rule to combat low pay, long hours, or bad working conditions. Socialists support trade unions as organisation for workers to fight for their interests. Therefore, socialists do not support practices that undermine unions. However, socialists have a vision that looks much further than limiting the forms of exploitation that working people submit to and socialists strive for the overthrow of capitalism and building a new world based on co-operation and social ownership. Socialists support unions because we believe in the power of ordinary people. The role of a socialist in a union can be varied. Socialists will always try to be good unionists at their work, but this can take different paths, depending on a range of factors. Being a union radical can mean assisting with initiatives in the union and building organisation for the next fight with the boss. It could mean opposing a corrupt leadership and building rank and file networks to challenge an entrenched union bureaucracy. Sometimes socialists may work for unions to contribute to building the organisation as an official. But always, socialists union activists seek to build the capacity for the working class to fight against their oppression.

The “disappearing working class” thesis in unsupportable. It was fashionable in the past to say it had been “bought off”, become “middle class” etc. etc. but hasn’t this recession exposed that myth. What is disappearing is the false idea that those in the middle class are not actually members of the working class.  It's true that waged industrial manual workers has shrunk in size and significance but you don't cease to be working class because you're serving burgers in a McDonalds rather than a factory worker. “Working class” denotes a position within the social relations of production. Socialists see the working class as the agents of revolutionary change not because it suffers a lot (sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't), but because it's so placed within the capitalist system as to be feasibly capable of taking over. Who else but the men and women who create the system, whose livelihood depends on it, who are capable of running it justly and collectively, and who would most benefit from such a change, should take it over?

The central place of wage workers in the productive process gives them the social power to overthrow capitalism. No other social class or group has the power to achieve this. Because the system of private property is the source of its oppression, the working class can liberate itself only by abolishing this system and replacing it with a system based on social ownership of the means of production. The working class re simultaneously at the root and source of the capitalist system and incapable of being wholly included within it. Only another of the contradictions of capitalism.

The point Marx made over and over again is that the working class is revolutionary or it is nothing. Worldwide the labour and socialist movements appear to have been in retreat for several decades. Yet it is a mistake to see the workers movement as merely that section of the working class organised within the trade unions or worse still the union leadership. The predominance of racist and sexist ideas, the whole-scale belief in religion, and other socially conservative ideas that seem to belie any possible revolutionary role for the working class. Despite the rout of the traditional working class organisations, the class struggle continues unabated.

If our vision of socialism is simply a slightly modified version of what exists, don't expect it to embraced. The market cannot coexist with socialism because socialism means that society owns and controls both the means of production and the goods which result from productive activity. For the market to exist, some sectional interest (an individual,  a joint-stock company, a nationalised concern, a workers' cooperative and so on) has to be in control of part of the social product, which it then disposes of by entering into exchange relations with others. Exchange cannot take place when society, and none other, controls the means of production and the social product. Far from socialism being compatible with exchange and the market, the generalised production of goods for exchange on the market is the hallmark of an entirely different type of society - capitalism. We are not saying that absence of the market is the sole defining feature of socialism. On the contrary, socialism is not merely a market-less society; it is also a stateless society, a classless society, a moneyless society, a wage-less society. The fact that social democrats, Leninists, Trotskyists and other supposed “socialists” or “communists” accept a role for the market, tells us that they represent forces for maintaining capitalism, not for achieving socialism. Haven't they all had their share of power, and haven't they all proved totally ineffective in ridding the world of the problems which capitalism continually recreates? Other contenders for the privileges which accompany the administration of capitalism such as the 'Greens' are waiting in the wings, and are having some success in turning themselves into mass movements because of the illusory attractiveness of their promises to reform the market system. Like previous attempts at reform, these latest efforts directed towards making the capitalist system function in a manner which gives priority to human interests are bound to fail. As long as the world market remains, human beings will be forced to dance to its tune. Market forces cannot be tamed; only eliminated. The very existence of humankind is now threatened by the rivalry and the fixation on profit which are inherent in the market system.

In the society envisaged by non-market socialists, the people of the world would own the global means of production in common and would operate them communally for the benefit of humankind as a whole. Socialism in one country, or even one part of the world, is impossible. Since capitalism today is a global society which encompasses all parts of the world, the socialist alternative to capitalism must be equally global in its scope. Socialism is as relevant to the plight of those who are starving in Africa and other parts of the world as it is to the inhabitants of London or Paris. It is true that non-market socialists have generally seen the wage workers of those advanced, industrialised areas of the world which act as the power-houses of international capitalism (Europe, North America and Japan) as the force which is likely to initiate the revolutionary change from world capitalism to world socialism. Yet the establishment of non-market socialism could not be accomplished without the active cooperation of the majority of the population in those parts of the world which capitalism has consigned to underdevelopment. In contrast to the hopelessness and destitution which afflict the majority of the people in backward countries under world capitalism, the prospect of dignity and sufficiency which world socialism would open up for them would be overwhelmingly attractive. It is also worth mentioning that several of the non-market socialist principles closely resemble the principles of social cooperation found among hunter-gatherers and other supposedly 'backward' people. People in their social position would take much less convincing of the desirability of non-market socialism than would many of those in 'advanced' countries who are currently steeped in the values and assumptions which capitalism encourages. Socialism would be a global solution to the global problems which have accompanied the rise of world capitalism.

If Socialism is worth struggling for, it is precisely because it will be based on the principle of "from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs". And capitalism, with its reliance on exchange, utterly fails to satisfy the real needs of the vast majority of the humanity.  

Workers United

The class struggle is not over, the battle of the working class is not finished, the fight to achieve socialism, is not redundant nor ‘old-fashioned.’ But it is not taking place. Only a handful of revolutionary socialists appreciated the tremendous opportunities now opening up and are talking in terms of a total social revolution. They are challenging the view that the class struggle can continue to  remain confined to improvements within the system. The various Trotskyist groups fail to see the tremendous potentialities of the situation because they are mainly preoccuped to establish their leadership over the workers movement. They all say that what is missing is the correct party-line (which they all interpret as their own party’s). None of them have confidence in the ability of the workers to solve their problems without their kind of leadership, steering  the workers’ movement down a blind alley of reformism and nationalism. Concentrating upon building up one’s own party  fiefdom and paying attention to only the narrow interests of one’s own organisation is detrimental to the growth and development of the revolutionary movement. At the same time, however, to advocate unity with all and sundry, at all cost,  is reckless and suicidal. We must not jeopardise our identity as socialists by joining broad blocs that include non-socialists and even anti-socialists that inevitably accept the continued existence of capitalism.

Despite the cliche misrepresentations,  the Socialist Party promotes the principled unity within the trade unions. The principle of trade unionism has been to organise all the workers, in every trade or service. This principle over-rode all distinctions of religion or politics. Whatever a man or woman might think on matters of religion, whatever views he or she might hold in politics, he or she is just as entitled as the next man to join his or her union—and, once joined, to enjoy the same rights and receive the same benefits as everybody else.  Socialists are utterly against any division because their chief desire is to strengthen the working class. Working class unity is not utopian. It exists and always has existed to some degree, nevertheless we can say that the working class is presently disunited. There are no united struggles of the entire working class, and the employers have been able to split the working class into as many sections, trades and crafts as possible. As a result, there are struggles being fought of a trade, craft or section of the working class in isolation from the entire working class, but against the entire united capitalist class protected by their state machine and news media. The capitalist class deploy everything available to them against a particular section of the workers leaving the other members of the working class  to helplessly watch from the side-lines the struggles of their fellow workers, being fought in isolation from one another and ending in defeat. The unity of the entire working class is an absolute necessity.  It is most urgent  to organise the un-organised workers. Without organising the non-unionised workers, to talk about uniting the working class is merely a pipe-dream.

However, the labour movement must begin to address social and political questions as the representative of all the workers. It must challenge and defeat the tradition of top-down initiatives and complacent reliance on politicians. The workers themselves must take the initiative in uniting their forces. Unity must be built from the bottom. The Socialist Party defends the trade unions’ struggle for the democratization and  right to free expression, association and complete independence with regard to the State to the best of its ability.  The Socialist Party’s  objective is not substituting and commandeering of the unions, but the aim of winning over the working class in these unions, convincing them of the correctness of the socialist revolution  and the necessity of fully involving themselves.

The basic struggle of the workers is two fold: 1) the political struggle against the capitalist system, and 2) the struggle at the place of work for better decent wages and working conditions.
Trade unions cannot and never could lead the struggle of the working class for the conquest of political power. This task can only be accomplished by a political party. When it comes to building this party, there can be no question of it emerging from the defensive struggles waged by the unions against the capitalists, no matter how important these struggles may be. The influence of socialist ideas in the unions is still minimal.

Too often, those on the Left view not as one of the exploitation of labour by capital but as a problem of “unequal distribution of wealth” and therefore centre around “equalising” the distribution of wealth, usually by taxing the rich.  For the even more reformist the problem at the place of work is not the heartless exploitation of labour by capital but the problem of a “misunderstanding” between workers and management that can be solved by improving industrial relations. Both subordinate the political mission of the working class  of overthrowing the capitalist system to one of reforming the capitalist system. So long as the workers are divided, economically and politically, they will remain in subjection, exploited of what they produce, and treated with contempt by the parasites who live out of their labour.

No compromise, No concessions

At the present time it is inconceivable that a reformist party can gain much in the way of reforms from the capitalist class. We are living in a period of recession for capitalism and not of its upswing. The class war is going on all the time: the enemy is still the enemy, even when, for his own ends, he gives way upon this or that point. “No compromise” must be our motto. Let us take all we can get, but never let us surrender our principles, for any consideration whatever.

Many cannot hope myself to live to witness the realisation of the a co-operative commonwealth, spreading throughout the world. But we know with a conviction that it is coming. Central to the capitalist economic system is the exploitation of workers by capitalists. In modern Britain, the chief means of production – raw materials, machinery, buildings, transport, etc. are owned and controlled by a small minority of capitalists. This determines that the great mass of people, the working class, have no choice except to work for capitalist employers so as to earn a money wage to buy the goods and services, the commodities, necessary for them to survive. On the face of things this relationship between capitalist and worker seems to be a fair and equal one: the worker agrees to do so many hours work for the capitalist and in return the capitalist agrees to pay a certain amount of money in wages. In reality this relationship is an unequal and exploitative one because the wages paid to the worker are less than the value of what he or she produces. The difference between the value of what workers produce and what they receive in wages constitutes the profits of the capitalist employer. Massive exploitation of the working class is an integral part of the capitalist economic system and will persist for as long as does capitalism.

Not only do capitalist exploit workers but the system operates in such a way that capitalists constantly have to try to exploit workers even more. Different capitalists producing the same kind of commodity are competing with one another in the market to sell their products. Failure to sell the commodities produced by his firm means bankruptcy and ruin for a capitalist and the main way of ensuring steady sales is to offer given commodities on the market at a price below that charged by other capitalists. If a capitalist is to reduce his prices without reducing his profits then one way is to increase the hours of work of his employees without paying them any more wages. Sometimes employers get away with this move in petty ways, for example, being paid for tea breaks and cleaning can be abolished, but where many workers are organised in trade unions, it is not easy for capitalists to force workers to accept an substantive increase in the degree to which they are exploited, such as the ploy is to speed up the rate of work, increase its intensity, and thus reduce the cost per item by forcing the workforce to produce more commodities in the same time as before. In the car industry this generally takes the form of speeding up the rate at which the production assembly line moves. Again, this does happen but in a given type of production there is usually a very definite limit to which the pace of work can be increased and anyway workers are likely to resist such a move.

 It is important to realise that capitalists are not always looking for ways to increase the degree of exploitation of workers because they, the capitalists, are inherently greedy but that they do this because of the way in which the capitalist economy operates leaves them with no choice if they are to stay in business. Similarly, if workers are not to be worked to death and totally impoverished then they have no choice except to take a common stand together against capitalist employers so as to resist employers’ attempts to exploit them even more. This is done by forming trade unions to defend wage levels and working conditions. In Britain a greater proportion of workers are in trade unions than in any of the other advanced capitalist countries. Even so it is obvious, especially with the onset of the present economic depression, that trade unions only have a very limited capacity to defend the living standards and working conditions of the working class.

While trade unions are a necessary means of defence of the working class against the capitalist class it is also the case that they pose no fundamental challenge to the whole capitalist system. Trade unions do not challenge the right of capitalists to exploit workers but only the degree to which this takes place. Even the most militant trade union struggles, involving workplace occupations and clashes with the police, pose no fundamental challenge to the dominant position of the capitalist class. If the working class does not rise above the level of recognising the necessity to organise industrially, of a trade union consciousness, then it will be doomed to an eternity of struggle with the capitalist class.

 The whole of capitalist society is organised around the capitalist economy. The modern family is structured to produce and discipline the workforce, labour power. The state passes laws and maintains the police and armed forces so as to keep the working class in line. Education and the mass media are powerful means of spreading the ideas and outlook of the capitalist class, bourgeois ideology, among the working class so as to get them to accept the capitalist system. Religions promise the good life in this world for those who knuckle under to oppression and exploitation in this one, and so on. Capitalist society in its totality is structured so as to preserve the exploitative relationship between the capitalist class and the working class which lies at its heart. Nonetheless this same system contains within itself forces which periodically throw it into crisis and open up the possibility of its final overthrow arid replacement by a society where oppression and exploitation do not exist.

 Another way, in fact the most important way in which capitalists try to gain an advantage over each other is by introducing new and more efficient means of production, technological innovation. The capitalist employer in a given field of production may be able to reduce his costs of production by introducing new production processes which enable output per worker to rise and thus cost per unit to fall. This allows the employer to sell his commodities at a price lower than that of his competitors while at the same time increasing his rate of profit on the capital he has invested. This advantage does not last long because the other employers will also quickly adopt the new production processes so as to be able to compete and stay in business. As the new production processes become introduced throughout an industry the proportion of total capital which is spent on raw materials, machinery, etc. rises while the proportion spent on employing labour power, on paying wages, falls. The consequence of this change is that since capitalists can only extract surplus value from those workers they employ directly and the number of these is falling, their rate of return on their capital falls as well. Paradoxically the greater efficiency in production brought about by developments in technology means a falling rate of profit for capitalists and redundancy for workers.

Such is the inbuilt unavoidable absurdity of the capitalist system of production: its enormous productive power brings it grinding to a halt. As the rate of profit falls, so capitalists become increasingly unable to find profitable ways in which they can reinvest their capital. As investment falls off so workers become unemployed. In Britain the rate of profit declined from around 1960 onwards and this structural feature of capitalism is the fundamental cause of the current world depression of capitalism. The last major world depression was in the 1930s. After World War II there was a world wide capitalist boom with a rapid rise of working class living standards in the imperialist countries. Capitalist politicians attributed this return to prosperity to the Keynesian economic policies being pursued by Western capitalist governments. The ruling class and their political and ideological mouthpieces proclaimed the advent of an everlasting economic boom with no return to major depression. Now it is all too clear that the periodic crises of capitalism have not been eliminated. The only way in which the working class can permanently rid itself of these cycles of boom and slump is to get rid of capitalism and replace it with socialism.

 The only way out of the present world-wide economic depression for the capitalist class is to do whatever is necessary to restore the profitability of capital. One way or another this means intensifying the exploitation of the working class by means of the methods mentioned earlier. If this is to be done then the trade unions have to be undermined and weakened so that workers are unable to resist intensified exploitation. As well as weakening the unions the capitalist state has an important role to play in restructuring industry and commerce so as to make them more profitable. It does this by providing all sorts of financial concessions and help to areas of production which seem to have profitable potential while ruthlessly withdrawing support from declining sectors of the economy such as mining. Another way of providing profitable investment opportunities for capitalists is by selling off the more lucrative state-owned enterprises.

 As the recession has deepened the state has tried to reduce its expenditures, especially on welfare services and social security. This has been done so as to try to keep down the degree to which the employers are taxed. The reason for that is that if the rate of taxation rises this cuts into already low profit levels. Savings in state expenditures have particularly hit those sections of the working class who are least able to cause much trouble for the capitalist class – the unemployed, the sick and the old. The state has pursued a deliberate policy of divide and rule by penalising the weakest sections of the working class rather than those who could offer some organised resistance.

 The current world-wide capitalist depression very clearly reveals the limitations of trade unionism and social democratic politics for the working class. With the re-emergence of mass unemployment the employers and their capitalist state ride roughshod over organised labour and vigorously set about undermining trade union organisation. The capitalist state cuts back upon welfare and social security benefits received by the working class with little effective opposition being forthcoming. Of course it is correct for workers, both employed and unemployed, to fight back as best they can against these attacks on their living standards and the Socialist Party encourages and supports such struggles. Even so these struggles are at best of a defensive nature and can only prevent the impact of the depression on the working class from being slightly less worse than it would otherwise be.  Genuine socialists must vigorously combat the propaganda of the reformists who seek to convince the working class that parliamentary reforms can make capitalism deliver the goods. We participate in these struggles in such a way as to help workers realise that only by the complete abolition of capitalism will they ever achieve freedom from material want and the security to enjoy it.

 A paradox of the capitalist system of production is that in the midst of plenty it also produces severe material deprivation. Capitalism has brought about the progressive development of the forces of production at a very rapid rate. Modern science and technology make it possible to provide material comfort and plenty for all. Yet in the world as a whole today the gap between the rich and the poor is actually widening, especially in the underdeveloped countries. The proportion of the world’s population who are underfed and starving is increasing. Even in the relatively prosperous countries such as Britain there are still millions of people who lack such basic necessities as a healthy diet and adequate housing. Clearly the problem for the great mass of humanity is not a lack of the skills, knowledge and resources necessary to bring about the material welfare of humankind. Rather the problem is one of abolishing the capitalist relations which prevent the forces of production being utilised in ways that meet the real human needs of everyone. From being in its earlier stages a force for the progressive development of humanity capitalism has now become a brake on further progress. The working class in all countries, including Britain, has a very real and urgent need to abolish the capitalist economic order.

 Not only does capitalism deprive most people of the means of material well-being but it also means that they lose control over the process whereby they produce the means of material life; we are in a state of alienation. What crucially distinguishes human beings from other animals is the very active relationship we have with our natural environment in the course of productive activity. We act on the world to satisfy our material needs and in the course of so doing change not only the world but ourselves as well; our relationships and consciousness. Man makes himself and he does this through work. Yet the worker does not possess the products of his labour, he does not have control over the productive process, capitalist economic relations throw workers into conflict with each other and work itself, that most human of our attributes, is experienced as a burdensome imposition. The loss of control, the alienation of the worker, is not confined to the sphere of production but extends out to all aspects of life in capitalist society. We need to abolish capitalism not simply to have a fatter pay packet but so as to gain control together over all aspects of our lives, to liberate the whole of humanity from alienation. Only revolution can achieve this objective.

Capitalism Must Be Abolished!

Few can deny that the world today is in upheaval. That is reflected in the widespread  turmoil and conflict not only in the developed industrial nations but also in developing nations throughout the globe. The Socialist Party has repeatedly demonstrated, is the capitalist system that does not and cannot work in the interests of the majority.

Socialists are agreed upon their object, that object being social and economic freedom and equality for all, and the realisation of the highest individual development and liberty for all, through the social ownership and control of all the material means of production. Many say they are socialists  but only those who believe in the object as here defined can be properly so described. Those who do not so accept it are not socialists, despite what they may say to the contrary. The goal of socialism as the classless society has its starting point in the propertyless condition of the working class. The Socialist’s goal represents the consummation of the struggle of the working class—its emancipation from the system which gives rise to that struggle.

Socialism is the name given to that form of society in which there is no such thing as a propertyless class, but in which the whole community has become a working community owning the means of production—the land, factories, mills, mines, transport and all the means whereby wealth is created and distributed to the community. Socialism is also the name given to a body of scientific and philosophic thought which explains why the socialist form of society is now a necessity, the forces upon which its achievement depends, the conditions under which and the methods whereby it can be achieved. It will be obvious at once that the basic principles of Socialist society are diametrically opposite to those of Capitalist society in which we live. Socialism stands for social or community property. Capitalism stands for private and state-owned property. Socialism is a society without classes. Capitalism is divided into classes—the class owning property and the propertyless working class.

We can easily understand, therefore, why the, employers , financiers and the land-owners are opposed to socialism. Their very existence as the receivers of rent, interest and profit is at stake. They do not merely reject the theory of socialism, but bitterly fight every movement which is in any way associated with the struggle for socialism. The beneficiaries and defenders of this economic dictatorship never tire of declaring it the “best of all possible systems.” Yet, today, after decades of new deals, fair deals, wars on poverty, civil rights legislation, government regulations, deregulations and a host of other reform efforts, capitalism presents an obscene social picture. Millions who need and want jobs are unemployed, including many of whose jobs have been out-sourced. Others are underemployed, working only part-time or temporary jobs though they need and want full-time work. Millions aren’t earning enough to maintain a decent standard of living for themselves and their families despite the fact that they are working. The malignant evil of racism and discrimination is pervasive. The health care system, despite heated debate for years, still fails to meet the needs of millions. Widespread pollution of our environment worsens. Crime and corruption are widespread at every level of capitalist society. Thanks to capitalism’s exploitation of workers poverty continues to grow. All of those problems still plague the working class—but have grown to even more monumental proportions.

These long-standing problems and the failure of seemingly unending reform efforts to solve or even alleviate them to any meaningful degree have imposed decades of misery and suffering on millions of workers and their families. Against this insane capitalist system the Socialist Party raises its voice in emphatic protest and unqualified condemnation. It declares that if our society is to be rid of the host of economic, political and social ills that for so long have plagued it, the outmoded capitalist system of private ownership of the socially operated means of life and production for the profit of a few must be replaced by a new social order. That new social order must be organized on the same basis of social ownership and democratic management of all the instruments of social production, all means of distribution and all of the social services. It must be one in which production is carried on to satisfy human needs and wants. In short, it must be genuine socialism.

 It is to the individual and social interest of the propertyless class to fight against the private property system and for socialism. They do it every day, though as yet only a minority do it consciously for socialism. When Trade Unionists fight the employers on wages questions and the conditions of labour they are really fighting against consequences of the private property system. The existence of the private ownership of the means of production means also the private ownership of the things produced and their sale as commodities in competition one with another. Labour also is a commodity and those who sell their labour power, the members of the working class, manual and brain-worker alike, also compete like other commodities.

Why then is it that all  trade unionists are not always socialists? People do not start their lives with fully developed theories about systems of society. Nor were trade unions formed to fight for socialism. The workers formed them to defend and improve their immediate conditions of employment, their wages, their hours of labour and so on. This is clearly revealed by the way in which the trade unions have grown.  The Socialist Party is not anti-trade union. On the contrary, we are ardent supporters of trade unionism. Socialists want their fellow trade unionists to recognise the cause of the struggle their unions are compelled to wage. Recognising the cause as rooted in the private ownership of the means of production and the propertyless conditions of the working class, socialists want all the struggles of the unions to be co-ordinated, so that behind every national or industry conflict there will be available the appropriate power of the working class. Socialists want sectionalism to be superseded by a united working class army. Trade unions should become transformed into industrial unions, i.e. one union for each industry. It means that the unions should recognise that all the efforts of the working class must be directed to the goal of the conquest of political power and their fight in the industrial field must be linked and  backed by the might of the working class, to achieve transfer the ownership of the means of production and distribution from private hands to social ownership. Divisions between workers are fatal and must be quickly overcome to develop solidarity of the working class in the struggle against Capitalism.And that solidarity is the basis of class action in politics.  No longer a movement of protesting wage slaves, they will become the means whereby the workers control the conditions and processes of industry.  A new basis of common ownership has given the transformed unions new functions of self-government and administration. Capable of assuming control and continuing to administer and operate the essential industries and social services, unions can exercise the power and provide the decisive leverage to “swing” the revolution. Moreover, they have the structure that provides the necessary foundation and structural framework for socialist society. It is the workers who will fill out the new social framework and make the people’s ownership, control and administration of the new social structure a reality.
Despite the many threats to workers’ lives, liberty and happiness today, despite the growing poverty and misery that workers are subjected to, a world of peace, liberty, security, health and abundance for all stands within our grasp. The potential to create such a society exists, but that potential can be realized only if workers act to gain control of their own lives by organizing, politically and industrially, for socialism.

But general agreement on the object, however, by no means presupposes universal agreement on policy and tactics. They are matters to discuss, to argue out, to confer about. It is for such purposes that our own party holds its annual conferences and  Autumn Delegate Conference, reaching a common agreement as to socialist policy and action in the present and immediate future. The Socialist Party calls upon all who realise and who may be increasingly aware that a basic change in our society is needed, to place themselves squarely on working-class principles. Join us in this effort to put an end to the existing class conflict and all its malevolent results by placing the land and the instruments of social production in the hands of the people as a collective body in a cooperative socialist society. Help us build a world in which everyone will enjoy the free exercise and full benefit of their individual faculties, multiplied by all the technological and other factors of modern civilization. We may not presently be overwhelmed by members but let’s be optimistic - “We’ve got a lot of room to grow.”