The Workers Struggle

 STRUGGLE,  RESISTANCE AND CLASS WAR

All over the world the working class, defined as those who sell their own labour power to the owners of capital, is growing in size and gaining in economic, social, and political importance. At the same time many members of the working class are backward in political and social outlook, and unaware of their class identity, holding racist-minded conservative views.  Many of today’s radicals emphasise the undeniable shortcomings of the labour movement rather than its positive accomplishments. Sometimes they appear to deny it any progressive features. They neglect the working conditions before unionisation, the fourteen- to sixteen-hour day, the exploitation of child labour, the early mortality rate for all workers; and they neglect to study what happens when unions are weak and fragmented or subordinated to totalitarian states. Thus according to some of these radical ideologues, workers will never become a force ready, willing, and able to transform society. They view the present characteristics, attitudes, and relations of workers are essentially unalterable by any foreseeable change in circumstances.

Along with the capitalist rulers today there is an arrogant faith in the longevity of the system, that firmly believes that the empire of the almighty dollar is assured of perpetual dominion at home and abroad. The capitalist class have succeeded in concentrating economic, political, military, and cultural power in their hands. They have grown stronger and richer than ever before. They hold the commanding heights over of the globe. This unequal and oppressive relationship has its consequences.

There are wage-workers who are up in arms against intolerable conditions of life and labour but substituting for this rebellious mass is a political saviour-force. Intellectuals, academics and party leaders self-selected to lead the way to the abolition of capitalism. At best they are paternalisti, a benevolent elite, but at worse,  a malevolent bureaucracy. How are they, or anyone else, going to promote a revolution along democratic lines without the conscious consent and active participation of the majority? And what happens if that majority remains apathetic and resistant to the ongoing revolution – as they should, according to certain preconceptions? If the workers cannot be revolutionised under any conceivable circumstances, then the prospects for expanding democracy are not optimistic,  much less the task of achieving socialism. The self-reliance of the workers is so weakened that they do not realise they can escape capitalist domination of the status quo.

It is ironical that certain radicals who reject Big Business replicate its low opinion of the working class potential for self-activity. They visualise workers as contented sheep who cannot look beyond their bellies, who cannot be inspired to struggle for broad social causes and political aims. The reactions of the workers are primarily and ultimately determined by what happens to them in the labour market and at the point of production. That is where they encounter speed-ups, lay-offs, discrimination, insecurity, wage reductions, and all the other evils of exploitation. That is why any drastic fluctuation in their economic welfare can quickly alter their tolerance of the existing state of affairs. Growing numbers of in the "white-collar", professional, and technical occupations are becoming more subjected to capitalist exploitation and alienation, more and more proletarianised, more responsive to unionisation and its methods of action, more and more detached from loyalty to their corporate employers. These trends can flare into massive anti-capitalist movements. Under capitalism, automation and new technology threaten the jobs of skilled and unskilled alike, in one industry after another. The dislocations and job instability caused by these processes have to be guarded against by both the economic action and political organisation of the working class.

The capitalist regime is well aware of the latent power of the strike weapon wielded by workers and constantly seeks to hamper its use. In practice, the rulers have little doubt about its revolutionary potential. Capitalist production cannot do without an ample laboring force, no matter how many are unemployed, because profit-making and the accumulation of capital depend upon the consumption of large quantities of labour power which creates value in the form of commodities. Although this or that segment or individual may be squeezed out of jobs temporarily or permanently, the industrial work force as such is not expendable, no matter how fast or how far automation proceeds under capitalist auspices. Workers are far from obsolescent. Indeed, the inherent limitations upon its introduction and extension under capitalism, the inability of the profit-seekers to fully  utilize the immense potential of the new science and technology for reducing the working day and rationalising production provide further reasons for socialism.

The working class is not an extinct volcano but its explosive energies simmer in its depths, in the bowels of the Earth. During inactivity, people come to believe that capitalism will never generate insurrectionary moods and movements in their time - until the eruption of intense class struggles. Time and again funeral liturgies have been conducted for this or that section of the working class, or the class in general, but they have turned out to be premature. An overestimation of the “reasonableness” of capitalism on the one hand and an underestimation of the latent capacities of workers on the other creates the shock-waves of the rebelliousness as the oppressed burst to life. What prevents them from organizing a mass political party of their own, being won over to socialist ideas?  Why can’t worker make history and remake society and, in the process, remake themselves?  If they wage and win wars for the ruling why can’t they conduct the class war in defence of their own interests.  When they again rise up workers will have to seek the road of independent political action to promote their objectives, as workers have always done.

The working class has colossal tasks ahead of it. It confronts the most formidable and ferocious of adversaries in the capitalists. The working class will be roused from its slumber by events beyond anyone’s control. The Socialist Party does not believe that the masses can be summoned into battle on anyone’s command. The class struggle unfolds with a rhythm of its own, according to internal laws determined by historical conditions. We recognise that the working class can launch mighty offensives on their own initiative once capitalism goads them into action. Yet we also acknowledge that  the most powerful spontaneous upsurge can fall short of its mark, drain away, and be suppressed. This misfortune has befallen the workers’ movement many times in the past.

The will to win is an indispensable factor in the way to win. The working class can go forward only as they become convinced that the bosses are not born to rule, that they are not omnipotent and unbeatable, that their system of exploitation is not everlasting but has to go and can be abolished. Workers are realising that the 1% are leading  the world to catastrophe. This is the essential message of Marx who taught that the workers are qualified and mandated by historical progress to supplant the plutocrats as the directors and organisers of economic and political life and become the pioneers of the first truly human society. The course and outcome of the struggle for socialism, if not the very survival of society, depend upon whether workers themselves have the confidence to take up the baton. 

Make Socialism a Mass Movement

Tory and Labour rule the same
The only difference is in the name

The current recession has depression have been teaching the  people of the world that something is basically wrong with  the present system, driving home the utter  senselessness of unemployment, hunger, and misery existing side by side with the most marvelous industrial and agricultural productive plant yet built by man, fully able to fulfill  every normal need of everybody in the world.  Every day is  demonstrating more clearly the inability of our politicians,business leaders and their economic advisers to solve our problems. Many are beginning to understand realize that this incompetence is not due merely to the stupidity or corruption of individual leaders of industry and the government, but that the system itself cannot work properly any longer, whoever is in charge. These persons are beginning to realize that the present system of society must itself be done away with and a new system substituted - that it is not merely a matter of honest men advocating reforms  but a revolutionary change in the whole structure of society.

In any class society one class rules, exploits, and oppresses the other class. The capitalist class is doing that now with the working class. The state is its instrument of rule and suppression. The capitalist state is a disguised dictatorship of the capitalist class. Through the powers of the state the capitalist class perpetuates its rule.This power is exercised in many ways. The controlling minority makes the decisions on  the possibilities of work and the conditions of work; the homes in which we live and the terms under which we live in them; the factories that will be built and the quantity of goods they will tum out; the wars to be fought. Even down to what most people wear, eat, actually what they think. The power to invest capital in industry or withdraw it, to buy, sell and mortgage land, to destroy natural resources, to run themedia, schools, and even the churches--this power is not merely economic, but political, social and cultural as well. Capitalist society, in which a small minority owns and controls the means of production, means and must mean capitalist dictatorship. Our apparent political freedom, then, our freedom to vote for "the candidate of our choice," affects in no important way the question of who actually controls society and the state. The technique for maintaining this peoples’ consent and confidence is so complex and extends into every social detail that it cannot be adequate summarized. Certainly one of its chief supports is the belief that the government is the representative of the whole of society, independent of any class or group conflicts and therefore able to be fair and impartia1 to carry out "the will of the people." This belief is instilled into every citizen from earliest years. It is the theme of classrooms, of public orators and media spokes-persons, of political campaign speeches. It reaches it culmination whenever there is a war we are called to sacrifice ourselves  for "our" country.

The working class must wrest that instrument of a capitalist dictatorship, the state, from the hands of the capitalists, must destroy its machinery of capitalist rule, and must establish in its place a proletarian dictatorship for the suppression of the capitalist class. This ‘dictatorship’ will not be a permanent one. It aims at the abolition of classes and consequently at the abolition of class rule and the state. This is the aim of socialists.

We are socialists out of conviction, because we see capitalism as harmful to the vast majority of our own and the world’s people. This system we live under, by its very nature, grinds the poor and working people, sets one group against another. We see in socialism the method of achieving a more just, more cooperative and more peaceful society. Socialists can offer an alternative which can meet basic needs of people and which is based on cooperation. Socialism offers a future free from the fears of poverty, sexism, racism, dog-eat-dog competition, joblessness, and the loneliness of old age. As our movement grows, we will be nearer to creating a society that allows each person to create and produce according to her or his ability and to obtain what she or he needs.

Utopia is imagined as a vision of a very distant future or as a dream which transcends reality. Utopia is a subject of the imagination and speculation without any connection with reality or even without any possibility of being involved in reality. As soon as a creative act is involved and the revolutionary action is involved utopia begins to merge with reality. Things which previously seemed unachievable becomes a possibility. What was impossible now becomes possible. The "I" begins to merge with "We," and personal desires with collective strivings. Socialism is now put within everyone's reach by the means of a mass movement.

We see capitalism today as a destructive system that hurts, divides and exploits the vast majority of our people for the sake of profits and power for the few. We advocate and work for socialism–that is, common ownership and collective control of the means of production (factories, fields, transport, etc.) and government. We want a system based on cooperation, where the people build together for the common good. The aim of the Socialist Party is to join with the revolutionary workers of all other countries in building world-socialism. Only a socialist society can utilize rationally the natural resources and productive machinery of the Earth in the interests of the peoples of the Earth. Only world-socialism will remove the causes of wars that under capitalism now seriously threaten to send mankind into barbarism or complete destruction. Only a  federation of socialist communities can alone solve the conflict between the efficient development of productive forces and the restrictions of artificial national boundaries.

Today, the questions of the meaning of life and mankind's goal in living have emerged again as questions of primary importance. Today, advanced industrial society is creating free time.

We have  moved rapidly toward a fully industrialized, automated world in which the ten or twenty hour working week will be standard, and where the many material satisfactions provided for everyone will be taken for granted. capitalism has prepared the industrial machinery and technology  We have no need any longer to trouble ourselves about that part of it. Our part is to get control of the political power in order to achieve socialism peacefully and systematically. In whatever way socialism comes, we must have a majority of the people in favor of it. The class-struggle and the logic of events is making socialists faster than any other kind of propaganda can, but that does not relieve us from doing our share. It is our work to clarify and educate the vast amount of vague, undeveloped socialist sentiment existing today, and crystallize and organize it into something palpable and definite. We must remember that socialism is not inevitable unless we do our part, and that promptly and wisely.

The election of a socialist to office here and there is not so important as some are apt to imagine, except for its educational effect. What kind of a benefit has socialism received from having a socialist may here and there or a socialist representative or two in the state house? Principally the publicity it gives the movement and the strength and courage imparted to us by success. These elected socialists are not able to take any practical steps in constructive socialism. What is the vital component of socialism is working class knowledge and the ensuing working class activity outside parliaments to make socialism a practical proposition.

Explaining the OBU

Jack Houston was in the Socialist Party of Canada and was editor of the editor of the OBU Bulletin. The following are adaptations of his editorials from 1919 to 1921. He was S.P. of C. Candidate in the Dominion election of 1908The S.P. of C. placed him in the field as a general organizer in 1909 In 1914, Comrade Houston, still carrying on organization work for the S.P. of C., transferred his activities to eastern Canada. He spent considerable time lecturing in Toronto, afterwards taking up his residence in Montreal. Born at Lanark, Ontario, he came to Winnipeg in 1905. During the First World War, he made munitions at Montreal. In August 1919, he was the founding editor of the OBU Bulletin (One Big Union Bulletin), which he remained until forced to step down in poor health prior to his death at St. Boniface on 11 March 1921. He was buried in Elmwood Cemetery.

The following is based on his editorials found here. 

The O.B.U. was not created  out of pure thought, but from the objective industrial situation. Craft unions have grown obsolete and this asserted not by spite but as a statement of fact. Craft unionism is obsolete because the conditions which gave it birth and demanded its growth have been supplanted by the onward development of industry itself and its ever changing methods of industrial organisation. The O.B.U exists not only because some labour leaders determined to bring it to birth, but because the workers would not remain in the old-style unions. This is a fact and not a theory. The welfare of our capitalist class depends upon private property. They rule because they own and they own because they rule.  Any challenge to their control is a challenge to their ownership, and nobody understands this better than the capitalists themselves. Therefore they wish to see the leaders of any movement in which labour acts as a class, discredited and punished, and they will use any and all means to see this accomplished.

 In Canada and the United States, the heads of the labour movement initiated the closest cooperation with the governments, that is, with the bosses. To the extent that this cooperation prevailed, labour was betrayed and to the same extent the leaders of labour proved themselves to be crooks. The history of the workers’ movement is a record of labour officials who have time after time sold out body and soul, to the corrupting influences of capitalism for either hard cash or position. Labour, today has to fight to capture every inch of ground from the hostility of the of big business and their toadies in the media, the courts and legislature, and in the universities.

Every revolution has character all its own, yet every revolution has points in common with all the rest. We are now taking about political revolutions. There are revolutions other than political revolutions. There are physical revolutions of matter about a centre; there are revolutions in dress, in fashions, in habits, in manners and customs; there are revolutions in science, in religion and philosophy. The world is not static but dynamic, therefore, all experience is of a revolutionary nature.

 Most people are frightened at the mention of a political revolution. Yet there is no need for worry. Contrary to general ideas, revolutions are not made, they just grow and the growth of a revolution is often not visible, or perceptible. The person who thinks he is producing a revolution is a fool; is like the fly on the wheel that imagines that it is turning the wheel, because it does not understand the mechanical powers.

The student of the social sciences knows, in a general way, the mechanics of revolution, but also knows also that the social forces are so complex that no student is able to measure the rate or intensity of the social processes. The supposed experts are as usually as much surprised as any person  when the social convulsion erupts, and is equally utterly unable to predict the direction or the extent of the movement.

The  industrial revolution caused by more efficient system of production and  an improvement of technology,through the discovery of new tools, processes or machines, thus making human creativity more efficient and more productive.  This produced changes  in human relations by the new system of production. Slowly and gradually men come to apprehend the lack of social control built up and suited to a previous system of production and long looked upon as just and right, authentic and authoritative. These institutions are now perceived to be fetters of production.

Principles are merely habits of thought. Each method of production developed its typical principles or methods of viewing or apprehending phenomenon . The feudal system of production with the lord ever in evidence, regarded society as authoritative and its scaffolding of status as the will of God. Under the handicraft system of production, it was necessary that one should do as he liked with his own, so that production and the commerce that grew with handicraft production developed new principles, and with Pym, Hampden and Cromwell in the limelight, asserted the right to manage their own business by depriving Charles I of his head. For a long time after machine production had replaced handicraft production the principle (habits of thought) of handicraft production has prevailed but today in ever greater and greater numbers men with new principles are challenging those of the handicraft line. It is a clash of principles. As soon as these new principles become pervasive to such an extent that a large majority of people possess the machine culture, the revolution will take place. How and when no man knows.

The students of social science find only two alternatives. Such a people will perish through strife and struggle or will, through revolution, not necessarily through violence, alter their institutions to harmonize with the new culture, or principles or habits of thought. The men who stand in the way of revolution are always a menace to peace and order, and the onward progress of the human race.

 Let it be clearly perceived that understanding must precede action if the action is to be intelligent. Therefore, the socialist stresses education that there may be understanding.  Who is going to undertake this task? Not the arm-chair philosopher who is never was anything but a critic. It must be done by the workers themselves and to do the work well they must bring the work of organizing an enthusiasm and resolve determination that will overcome all obstacles. Every worker must educate himself or herself.

Working-Class Tactics

The tactics of the workers are and will be dictated by the ends which are the ideals sought. The means by which these ends are to be attained are governed by more than one determining factor. The workers are the foundation on which our civilisation is built. That civilisation which satisfies its wants through an economic system which is based on the exploitation of labour by the owners of capital, an economic system which is, at the same time, the pecuniary system, the competitive system and the price system and which measures success or failure in terms of money, necessarily dictates the objects of working class activity. Plainly stated the workers want to be on an equality with all others in society, which means that all must do their bit, all must share and share alike in duties, responsibilities, and in the actual work of production. This aim is democracy, a word which has an odious smell these latter days, because of the hypocritical drivel of our present rulers. .

 The ways and means by which the working class is to free itself from domination and exploitation cannot be foretold. There are too many factors in the calculation to predict results; and there are the unknown changes which are constantly coming into the problem and affecting the relations of men, which make the role of the prophet mere foolishness. But some of these factors can be taken to be, for all practical purposes, unchanging. One of these is human behaviour, another is the end aimed at, a third is that the workers must emancipate themselves. With these three factors fixed we can say a few words on tactics.

Briefly, then, any tactics are good tactics which give to the workers superior weapons, or advantages of position, a better understanding of their relative positions with that of the enemy, the exploiters of labour.

First, understanding must precede action. Therefore, a sound knowledge of economics and of culture, is desired. Economics is well enough understood by those who take the pains to make use of the means at hand. Culture is not so well understood. To understand culture is to know why one group of people hold one set of beliefs while another group hold entirely different ones, sometimes diametrically opposed to those of the first group or to those of all other groups.

Possessed of this knowledge and knowing the direction and extent of the malevolence of its class  enemies, the tactics of workers consist at the present time, largely, in building up its organisations. The immediate aim of this system of tactics is to fit the workers to take charge of industry. They must, therefore, consolidate their position by getting into their union organisations every one who is essential to the management and planning of affairs. All the engineers technicians and scientists are necessary and must be brought into the fold.

To gain experience the masses must be brought again and again into the fight with the enemy.
Today the fight may be in an election while tomorrow it could be a test of the industrial strength for better conditions or higher wages. Always it is to be remembered that the people better responds to mass action only when idealism takes the form of emotion and passionate struggle. The tactics of the present has for its object, teaching the workers to organise so as to win victories. Any field, political, economic, or industrial, is good so long as the required object is held.

A scientist will say no one really understands a question until the terms or language peculiar to that study has been learned , that is to say, that while one is getting the ideas he or she is also getting the terminology. There is such a thing as popularising science or presenting an easy guide to it. This process is like lowering a high voltage current to render it safe for light duty purposes. The terms surplus value, the materialistic conception of history and the class struggle in themselves, contained but small hints of the special meanings applied to them by the intellectuals of the working class movement. However, the terminology in which these principles of working class study were clothed was a stimulus to the studious, while the lazy who would have only confused any question, were repelled from any consideration of the matters at issue. The once exclusive learning of professors is now, through a thousand channels, coming to be thoroughly understood by ordinary workers.

The class struggle produces class consciousness. Loyalty is almost an  inherited instinct nature of humanity, part of the heritage of every human being. This loyalty must have some subject on which it may rest. In primitive times  it was the family; during later periods it rested on the clans then the confederation of tribes. Since the arrival of modern civilisation, the territorial division known as the state or nation has been its foundation. Nowadays, it rests on the class of workers alone, and finally when classes are abolished, the inherited loyalty will cover the whole human race. Loyalty involves its necessary component or opposite hatred or dislike of all outside its own class. At the present time, no one can be called class conscious who had any vestige of loyalty to the nation or state.

When Marx wrote on surplus value the prevailing handcraft notions of economics, made it possible that the new theory has spread so rapidly over the world and has brought the workers so sharply against its stern rule in so rude a manner that few illusions from the old handcraft culture have any chance of retaining their validity among the actual workers in the plants. The workers do the work and must be secured in their livelihood or they cannot perform their tasks. The owners take the product of labor because they are owners. The worker will be on the pay roll when the boss can make a profit but at any other time his only right is to starve to death. When he has any part of the pay left he has rights as a professor of wealth but, the moment his pay is all spent, he is a vagrant with laws made and provided for his promp exclusion. Should the workers in any particular number cease work and thus upset the social order, as is inevitable when capital (owners) is not receiving the profits that might be in sight for the time being, they must be imputed to be rebels against the social order and criminals both in fact and in law. The code as written may not so class them but the law as construed must so treat these recalcitrants. The worker who thinks that he possesses any rights, which come as a hold over from the codes of the days of the handicraft laws, is a thro-back.

The materialistic conception of history was presented to us from Marx and Engels in a somewhat imprecise form. The miracle of their presentation was, that, with the sources of information and the state of the social sciences so backward, their generalizations and their applications of the principle were so sound. Little wonder, however, that so many people found it impossible to make an interpretation of what was meant and that so much fog and confusion was the result. At first a socialist doctrine, it has come to pass that the bulk of the development along its lines has been made not by socialists, but by scientists seeking knowledge for itself. After Marx, Morgan made the first substantial contribution in his great work, Ancient Societies. Then followed a whole school of archaeologists, ethnologists, psychologists and sociologists, all of whose contributions of any value have been made in this present century.

 Academic journals, from time to time, contains the sum of the new discoveries. The proof that one understands the materialist conception of history is the  ability to make the application of the principle to the numerous changes in the social world as they occur. The purpose of the theory is to enable its students to understand human behavior insofar as it can be called conduct. The beginning of wisdom in this regard is to be able to tell what is native endowment or heredity, and what is cultural, or the use and wont, or habituation. If one has not learned to make the discrimination, he or she is a-historical.

No strike can be won. If the strikers win, it is not a strike but a revolution. It is a failure to maintain the relation of ownership to the thing owned, a negation of the rights of discretion and control over poverty. Our analysis is that the powers of the state unflinchingly applied will bring an immediate victory to the owners. But often victory is worse than defeat. The enemy retires to perfect new resources for another assault.

What is now challenges is the ethical right of owners of property to dispose of the social product of labor and the lives of men, their happiness, their joys and sorrows, their hopes and aspirations. The class struggle is on, but the end is not yet.

 The task is the task of the workers. On the results of their efforts humanity will write either success or failure. The technology of the human race requires, now, a social product. Our laws, our political institutions, our social relations are those of the days of individualism and further back those of autocracy. Both or either of these principles means failure to progress in social achievement and in well doing in the well being of the inhabitants of earth. Let the workers draw together with the common aim, in their social groups, determined that the achievements of science, the triumphs of technology, the efficiency of social-team work will be made immediately available for the common-weal, and in our own day.

First then, the workers must purge their own institutions, their unions, from all self-seeking individualism and bureaucratic autocracy. In their own unions must first be worked out that principle of full and free democracy which will make these institutions subject to the rank and file—those who do the work. Not until this is done is the ground cleared for progress of any kind or in any direction. “Workers of the world unite,” is a futile, empty slogan until this first, and perhaps the greatest of all our tasks, is accomplished.

 Many have long suspected that Marx was always  right. In fact our suspicions have been steadily growing for a number of years, and now we have an illustration that sets our wandering mind at rest and we are quite satisfied that he was right. Karl Marx made a number of definite statements backed up by unshakeable argument. One of these statements was to the effect that labor—and labor alone—produces all values.

Direct action, however, on the part of labor, when labor is fully organized, carries with it consequences so dire and destructive that it must not be played with as children play with a toy. Direct action involves the complete stoppage, of the present economic system and as a consequence, when labor reports in direct action, labor must be so trained and disciplined through actual experience in doing things that they have the organization to carry on, all ready to hand. All the direct actionists in the world, who adjure all other tactics, could succeed in nothing except in causing confusion and failure. If they were not prepared with the substitute organization. The future of direct action will lie in the direction of a short time strike as a demonstration of solidarity and determination. Even then, the necessity must be grave which would call into being the use of such a powerful weapon. Direct action is in the nature of sabotage and the evil effects of sabotage can be fully understood when we see the results of the evil things as used day by day by the present owners of capital.

There should be no necessity for direct action on the part of labor fully organized and organized on the basis of understanding the economic system as it is. Capitalism is day by day revealing its weakness. Capital must expand or die. The limits for its expansion have been reached in many directions and soon all avenues will be clogged. Then nothing remains but self-destruction through conflict and wars. The human race will soon see the impossibility of capitalism and an economic system will be evolved where all must work so hard as to render social service, where all will be equal, where all will participate in the enjoyment of the social product because everyone will be compelled to do his bit. It is the job for labor to make the change. The change only awaits the growth of understanding that is the growth of pervasive culture. When that comes into being the final push to the house of cards may come through direct action or it may come from an insurgent militarized or it may come through parliamentary action. Any old way will be a good way.

Prof. Hoxie in what is perhaps the best history of American Trades Unionism that had been written, divides unions according to function and according to structure. Structure is important only because of its effects on structure. Adopting a simpler subdivision than the professor, a few remarks are here offered in regard to the functions of the Trades Unions.

Our division, for the time being, will be threefold, that is revolutionary, militant and reactionary Trades Unions. Revolutionary Trades Unions is [sic] out for a complete change in the economic order. Of such a nature is Guild Socialism, Communism and Syndicalism also Bolshevism. These are all out with a cut and dried structure for the economic society of the future and their plans are all laid and the blue-prints drawn for the new structure. These people are fondly accumulating material and assembling forces to be used in building, and the main work is soon to be begun or get under way.

Militant Trades Unionism centers its activities on the present. The phenomena which it studies are things as they are. To understand social phenomena the genetic methods of physical science are borrowed. The past is studied so that a proper understanding of the present may be had. The social order is regarded as dynamic and not as static; all the social order is in process of flux and change; nothing is, everything is becoming; what we see before our eyes is a continuous succession of social phenomena in more or less casual sequence; the child of today is the man of tomorrow. The future is in the field of idealism. With the millions of social factors at work any combination of which may possess a determining influence on future combinations, it is impossible to predict the processes of society even in the immediate future. One invention or discovery might and would change fundamentally the whole basis of ownership, might compel us to recast every human institution. The present is ours to do with it as we will; the future belongs to our children. Militant Trades Unionism, therefore, sets its hand in the work which presents itself to be done today.

Reactionary Trades Unionists looks upon society as static. The present order is the natural order. The system of property, of little more than one hundred years duration is nor as it was at the beginning and ever more shall be. The tendency of this old Unionism is to dwell on the past and to depend on the institutions of the past. All these people are hurt when there is any deviation from the old order, with which they are familiar. Such a people always stand in the way of progress. From the standpoint of culture, these people are only halting on the way of progress. The social forces are of such a nature that, by and by, they must come under the rod. In the meantime they ought to be indicted and to be convicted for being a common nuisance.

Individualism

In Industry, in politics, in religion, even the principle of “Every man for himself” is not “well seen” today.

In place of this principle of individualism, there has come into the world another conception of life and the guiding thread that should govern social relations; this is the principle of race solidarity.

Marx said that the manner by which men made their living together determined their social, politically and intellectual life processes generally.

When the machine processes of production became the prevailing process by which men made their living together, there was bound to follow, so soon as time sufficient to make the necessary mental adjustments had been given, profound changes in man’s ways of looking at all of his social relations.

Now it is seen that all of man’s institutions should be made to conform to the new industrial methods which are forced on the world by the greater efficiency of the new and more complex systems of production brought into being by the machine.

It is the shift from the “I” method of looking at human affairs to the “we” method of observing and appreciating human relations.

The man who retains the old “I” standards is a reactionary and stands in the way of human progress until he is compelled to recognize that he is living in a changed world. What is wanted is to see that the change has come into the world and to lead to subordinate, to the required degree the selfish instincts, so that the world may go on unhampered in the direction it must follow.

In making the shift there must come in clash of cultures, wars and revolutions, the destruction of civilization and, perhaps, the death of racial types.

Man, in making the adjustments, is still at the mercy of his instincts. Institutions are not built by rationalizing. History showed more examples of peoples who have failed to survive than those who have saved themselves alive, in the making of the shift from one culture to another.

The Law of Capitalism

There is anger stirring among the population, particularly as their living standards implode. Yet at the same time, there is widespread despair. The media spreads the notion that capitalism is the only alternative.

Reformists have prevailed over the decades and across the world but what do the people have to show for it?  In some cases social welfare programs yet these are now in jeopardy. Has exploitation been ended, the enrichment of a few on the labor of the many?  Poverty? Inequality? Is the economy planned to benefit the people? Have the creative powers of the ordinary person been unleashed?  Reformists are content with class divisions, the dominance of the capitalists, and they do not challenge the existing structures

The worker need not hope for a reasonable wage. The capitalist has but to dismiss some of his hands, or fill their places with labor-saving machinery which other laborers have invented and constructed, and those thrown out of employment will immediately underbid those employed in order to be reinstated. If the latter do not accede to a reduction of wage, he will be dismissed to make room for the one who offers his services cheaper. If the workers form a union, and strike for higher wages, they cannot hold out as long as the capitalists to whom they have given up nearly the whole of their product, but surrender as soon as their idleness reduces them to poverty. Under the present system, where the wage-receiver works for a profit-taker, he can never retain his independence, or retain the fruits of his labor.  It is useless to preach thrift to those who have nothing to save, or to hope for universal prosperity when the enrichment of the few is caused by the plunder of the many. Speculations in investments in stocks,and shares are all speculations on the possible future of losses of labor. Dividends do not create themselves – they are all filched from labor. If the laborers ceased to be plundered, there will be no dividends. The more they can cripple the bargaining power of the workers, the longer they can hold down wages the more profits are made from which to pay those dividends.

How can we get from the present unjust, destructive system, into one in which justice and happiness shall be the distinguishing characteristics? How shall we fight out of the present blood-thirsty system without the shedding of blood and without the disastrous reaction which has marked the bloody rebellions of the past? How shall we change bondage into liberty? We, slaves as we are, have to emancipate ourselves. It can be done. It must be done. It shall be done.

The basic problem of capitalist production has nothing to do with whether this capitalist is “good” and “generous,” and that capitalist “bad” and “miserly.” It is not at all the personal character of the capitalist that is involved – his character usually merely reflects his social position. It is not at all the individual capitalist who must be “changed” in order to change conditions. It is rather the mode of production that is involved. That is what must be studied, and that is what must be changed.

Let us take for our first example a modest and pious capitalist. He owes nothing, he argues, to the labor of others. All he has he acquired by his own labor or wit or good luck. By working like a slave for years, by stinting himself, by saving every penny; or by a legacy from a wealthy uncle; or by stumbling over a valuable gold nugget – he has managed to get hold of, say, $100,000. He got that wealth without employing labor, therefore, without exploiting anyone. So far, it seems, argument is on his side. It is not even necessary to challenge his argument, for thus far he is not yet a capitalist.

Suppose, however, that this man of wealth launches an enterprise in which he invests his hard-earned, self-earned, or luckily-found $100,000. We will even overlook how he got it in the first place. He has it, and he invests it in production.

On this sum of money, he makes a profit of ten per cent per year, or $10,000. We keep in mind here our theory of surplus-value, and we assume that the rate of surplus-value in this case is 100 per cent. That is, if the workers in his plant worked an average of four hours per day to produce the equivalent of their wages, they worked an additional four hours to produce the surplus-value. At the end of the year, the total capital would amount, thereafter, to $10,000 more than was originally invested, or to $110,000. The additional $10,000 is his profit.

The capitalist, however, is not too ambitious. He is not interested in accumulation, that is, in expanding production. All he wants is his modest profit of $10,000, and all he wants to do is spend every penny of it on food, clothing, a home, an automobile, a little life insurance, and some other necessities of life and a few small comforts for himself and his family. In other words, he consumes his profit personally and does not re-invest it. He is content in the feeling that he deserves this income because of his enterprising nature, the risk he took in launching the business, the talent he displayed in organizing production and selling his commodities on the market at a reasonable profit. His piety is satisfied by the feeling that he exploited nobody, but instead gave a number of workers a good job and good wages in return for a fair year’s work.

If this is the basis on which he operates, he will naturally start the second year as he did the first, with a capital of $100,000, having himself consumed, as an income he considers his rightful own, the $10,000 profit he made.

But let us stop a moment. The $100,000 with which he starts the second year is not the same $100,000 with which he started the first year. Of the original $100,000, he used $90,000 for machinery, raw materials, etc., and $10,000 for wages. When he received $110,000 on the market for the goods produced by the end of the year, it divided up this way: $90,000 represented the value of the machinery, raw materials, etc., incorporated into the finished products; $10,000 represented the value contributed by the workers to make up for the wages he gave them; and another $10,000 represented the surplus-value contributed by the workers in the second part of their working day.

After taking as his income $10,000, the capitalist still has left what he started with – $100,000. But only $90,000 of that came from his original capital; the remaining $10,000 came from the workers whom he exploited.

Now, if this same process is repeated during ten years, it should be clear that he will start the third year with only $80,000 of his original capital and $20,000 of surplus-value; the fourth year with only $70,000 of his original capital and $30,000 of surplus-value; and that he will enter his eleventh year in business without a penny of his original capital. He will once again invest a full $100,000, but every cent of it will have been the product of the exploitation of labor!

From this example it may be seen that no matter how noble and spotless the methods by which a man may have gathered together a large sum of money in the first place, the moment it is converted into capital, it cannot be increased, and it cannot even be maintained at its original size, without the exploitation of labor.  What this or that capitalist desires to do is not decisive. The mode of production is what decides. The capitalist who does not accumulate, expand, is doomed. He must expand or be crushed. This lies not in his nature, but in the nature of capital itself.

Rough Sleeping In A Rough Society

Nothing illustrates the madness of capitalism better than the news that many millionaire's homes in London stand empty while the following scandal occurs. 'Last week the government published its rough sleeping statistics for 2013, showing that the number of people sleeping on the streets on any one night in England has risen a further 5% to 2,414.' (Guardian, 4 March) Inside a socialist society houses will be built for people to live in not to increase some rich person's portfolio. RD

The need for a socialist party

What does the word “politics” mean to the average worker? It brings to mind bribery and corruption.  If he sees a public figure (or sometimes a figure in the trade union movement) doing something under-handed in order to line his pockets or to climb up the ladder of careerism, he or she says, “That is politics.” This is based upon the realities of capitalist politics, which is always accompanied by corruption, office-seeking. Politics as conducted by the capitalist politicians is usually dirty and sordid.

 Even the left-wing politics leaves much to be desired. Left organisations who call themselves "the vanguard" are, in the whole, adherents of Leninism. In their view, Marx’s concept of a workers’ party has been reduced to the idea that all that is needed is a “correct programme” and a democratic-centralist organisation. The title of “the Marxist-Leninist party” is synonymous with their having that “correct programme”. A trademark of the “revolutionary party” is also their manner of “intervention”. Some members of a group will be assigned to intervene among formations attempting to reach people on one issue or another. The real goal of these interventions is the cannibalise movements and organisations in order to gain more members. If it is so decided that the issue or protest group is no longer conducive to party-building, its members will disappear as suddenly as they appeared.

  A political struggle cannot be fought successfully by the workers unless they have a political weapon, which means, their own political party. The capitalist class has its own political organizations. It sees to it that they remain committed to its basic interests, the maintenance of the capitalist system. It sees to it that they remain under its control. It provides them with a press. It provides them with funds, running into millions of dollars each year. In some places, the capitalists are in direct control of these parties, in others, its agents and sworn friends are in direct control. Even if, under certain conditions, a “progressive” breaks through to a nomination and gets elected, the capitalist class still maintains control of the political machinery and is able to realize its aims in the end. The workers need a party of their own.  It is the first big step in breaking from the capitalist parties and capitalist politics, and toward independent working-class political action.

We’re all part of the same struggle for liberation. But what is this ”liberation” we’re working for? To build  that socialist society we have to recognize who the enemy is. Our enemy is capitalism –the bosses, the big corporations  and the politicians who work for them. The capitalists always try to tell us you’re wrong to fight us because if our profits go down you’re going to go down the drain. When the bosses  speak of sacrifice, what they mean is that the workers should sacrifice. But the only choice is to fight harder.

The actual work of the unions is based upon an acceptance of capitalism. They are not organised for the purpose of liberating the working class from the condition of exploitation and oppression to which it is doomed under capitalism. Instead, they confine themselves to the attempt to raise the wages of the workers and obtain favorable social legislation while keeping the capitalist profit system. The longer capitalism is allowed to exist, the more acute become its problems. The more acute its problems, the stronger and more urgent its drive against the workers' living standard. The most that the unions can do – given the way they are now constituted and led – is to resist this drive, try to slow it down. If they remain committed to the capitalist system, the unions, and the workers in general, are limited to defensive actions and, in the long run, to defeat. The class struggle is a political struggle, but the unions, by themselves, are not equipped to conduct it successfully. The problems of the workers cannot be solved in the form of a “better contract” between one local union and one employer, or even between one industrial union and a large capitalist combine.

If we think only in the most narrow “wage” terms, the most modest victory of the workers in one plant or industry depends upon the organized strength of the workers all over the country, in all the important plants and industries. In other words, the progress of any group of workers depends upon the strength and organization of their class, upon its ability to contend with the capitalists as a class.

But the struggle between the two is not confined to the economic field. The state, the government, is an instrument of the capitalist class in this struggle. It intervenes in the struggle more and more directly. The closer capitalism comes to collapse, the more frequently it breaks down – the more active and direct is the intervention of the government to “organise” it, to maintain it. Capitalism is intertwined with the machinery of the government. It is not an accident, and not a whim of some group of politicians, that the government and its agents are increasingly present and dominant in the economic life of the country. It is the inevitable result of a capitalist process.

Consequently, the attempt to solve the labour movement’s problems on the purely economic field, yields fewer and fewer results. To solve their economic problems, the workers find themselves forced to go deeper into the political field, to engage in political action. Even such matters as wages, work-day and working conditions are no longer simply settled between one union and one employer. They must be taken up with the government, or one of its bureaus or boards, which have acquired the power to settle them. This serves to bring about a clearer understanding of the fact that the class struggle is a political struggle. The trouble is that the unions are not equipped for effective working-class political action.

Our need is revolution

We call our society “civilised,” and compare it with those previous primitive systems that we said were at a “savage” or “barbarian” stage. We point at our great works of art, the wonders of our science, our technological marvels in  appliances and machinery of all kinds. Yet we fail to secure for each and all enough to live a life of comfort. That the present social system has failed must be apparent to all who have studied it. It has rendered the many subservient to the few; it has checked the best human endeavours, and facilitated every method of exploitation; it disinherits the many, and foreordains their lifelong misery before they are even born; it makes one dependent upon another’s caprice. It is an incentive to plunder and to idleness.  Plutocracy rules the world.

 Capitalists always seek to convey the idea that the profit system, class society and exploitation will continue to exist forever. In other words, that is natural and eternal, and there is no use anyone thinking of making fundamental changes in it or replacing it with any other social system.

Our good, kind, benevolent employers, to whom the expropriated and exploited  goes hat in hand, cringing for the privilege of being permitted to work extort  huge slices out of the worker, by buying his or her services as much beneath their true value as he can possibly procure them, and selling them as much above their worth as the circumstances will permit him to extort. The bigger his business, the greater his power over his employees. Under capitalism, workers have no control over what is produced and how. All that is decided by how much profit some capitalist will gain. But socialism enables the community to decide how to organise itself and the resources of society to meet the needs of the people. As John Adams said, when drawing up the Constitution of the United States of America, “What matter whether you give the food and clothes to the slave direct, or whether you just give him enough in wages to purchase the same?”

It is an unfortunate fact that the workers have not yet learned that socialism offers the only solution to their plight They express their discontent with a series of reforms they seek but  almost every demand that is arising today from the angry and bitter working class, and which aims at the very simple goal of a decent living for everyone is “utopian”, in the sense that they are unworkable within the present system, for such are demands for security and well-being only socialism can provide.

These aren’t the best of times. More and more families are forced to go on welfare benefits, as jobs are wiped out and are harder and harder to get. Welfare is not something that takes from the hard working people as the government tries to re-portion the blame. It is often the last resort, when employers won’t let people work, or when they cannot keep up with the cost of living.

 Rebellion grows against the handful of big bankers and corporate CEOs who run this system of capitalism and benefit from it, while millions of people are standing in line for a charity hand-out or going without food. We especially have to keep in mind that by far the great majority of people who are poor are not on welfare, but are the working poor,  employed in miserable underpaid jobs. And workers who are organised into unions and get better wages are always just one step away from the poor house, even in the best of times.

The few “concessions” to the people we were able to extract from the ruling class in the past social security, unemployment payments, were just enough to give most working people a small sense of security and the hope that their children would have a better life  but also, to keep the workers and their children alive, because the employers need the workers, generation after generation, to make their products, and their profits. They were willing to pay welfare to women with children, even though the women themselves didn’t work directly for the bosses, because the children could be raised as future workers. But they have no more small crumbs to toss to us. They are snatching back the few crumbs they have already thrown. They cannot afford to think of future workers. They have to squeeze as much out of the workers today as they can.

In socialism, we will use all our industry and farmlands together. We will build new factories, machines, transportation systems, parks, theatres, schools, hospitals, and the other things we need to provide for ourselves and future working people who will inherit together what we produce together. Automation will be used to give us more leisure in common, not to lay us off and increase the competition among us for the jobs that are left. And there will be plenty enough for everyone to live comfortably. This is not a dream, but a reality.  We can make it happen here–by uniting in struggle and smashing every link in the capitalists’ chain of slavery. We’ll sweep away their system and we’ll build our own, our new, brighter future. A future where we workers will run the factories, produce for our needs and not for the profits of the capitalist bosses. Only by completely getting rid of this system of wage slavery and its law of profits and the system in which the capitalists own and control everything, including us and our labor, can we advance to socialism. We can’t move forward step by step, winning some concessions here and there.  Didn’t we fight for the eight hour day, for the right to strike, for worker laws and isn’t it true that we’re fighting for these things all over again? There’s no way step by step we can win, it’s only by getting rid of the whole source of these problems, the system of capitalism, that we can build a new society run by and for the people.

A Run on a Food bank

The largest food bank in Scotland, which exists to help feed the poverty stricken, has run out of food. The food bank in Glasgow has been cleaned out because the number of families asking for help has reached record levels.

The number of people requesting help via the Citizens Advice Bureau for food in January was more than half the number turning up to food banks throughout the whole of 2013. The food banks are mostly run by the Trussell Trust, which runs 42 food banks in Scotland alone.

The alarming scale of poverty crisis in the UK led to the Glasgow City Mission closing its doors and unable to provide basic foodstuffs to those in need. Almost 8,000 people in Scotland were helped in January alone by being offered tinned fruit, bread and other foodstuffs donated by others. But following an appeal by the Glasgow Mission, schoolchildren in the city's schools collected food from parents to give to the charity to help with the shortfall.

To qualify for food bank handouts, applicants are strictly selected and their finances looked into before being offered any food.

The New Yorker discovers Marx

From the January 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

One hundred and fifty years after the publication of the Communist Manifesto, the New Yorker has discovered that "Marx's version of free enterprise also chimes with the views of many contemporary businessmen, who would rather be flogged than labelled Marxist".

John Cassidy's 5,000-word essay "The Return of Karl Marx" in the October 27 issue of this magazine from the bastion of American capitalism does not include Marx's view of a future world based on common ownership. Nor does it support his labour theory of value. It is however amazingly laudatory when dealing with Marx's analysis of how capitalist accumulation operates. Cassidy quotes one Wall Street organiser of stock issues as saying: "The longer I spend on Wall Street, the more convinced I am that Marx was right . . . I am absolutely convinced that Marx's approach is the best way to look at capitalism."

At first Cassidy was astonished at that claim and recalled that he had studied economics with his financial friend at Oxford in the early eighties when their teacher had taught them to agree with Keynes that Marx's economic theories were "complicated hocus pocus". He decided to re-examine Marx's writings and found himself agreeing with his Wall Street friend.

After sneering at Marx's writing style he goes on to heap praise on his analysis of capitalism:

"When he wasn't driving the reader to distraction, he wrote rivetting passages about globalizaion, inequality, political corruption, monopolization, technical progress, the decline of high culture, and the enervating nature of modern existence--issues that economists are now confronting anew, sometimes without realising that they are walking in Marx's footsteps."

Cassidy is unstinting in his praise for Marx's materialist conception of history:

"Indeed, as Sir John Hicks, a Nobel Prize-winning British economist, noted in 1969, when it comes to theories of history Karl Marx still has the field pretty much to himself. It is, Hicks wrote; 'extraordinary that one hundred years after Das Kapital . . . so little else should have emerged'."

Globalisation

On the growth of global markets Cassidy again praises Marx. "Globalization is the buzzword of the late twentieth century, on the lips of everybody from Jiang Zemin to Tony Blair, but Marx predicted most of its ramifications a hundred and fifty years ago. Capitalism is now well on its way to transforming the world into a single market, with the nations of Europe, Asia, and the Americas evolving into three rival trading blocs within that market."

While criticising Marx's view of the struggle between worker and capitalist as "too rigid", Cassidy provides some startling figures about ownership in the USA in modern times. "Between 1980 and 1996, the share of total household income going to the richest five percent of the families in the country increased from 15.3 percent to 20.3 percent, while the share of the income going to the poorest sixty percent of families fell from 34.2 percent to 30 percent." Even more to the point he writes: "According to Edward Wolff, a professor of economics at New York University, half of all financial assets in the country are owned by the richest one percent of the population, and more than three-quarters of them are owned by the richest ten percent."

In discussing the role of the unemployed in keeping down wages, Cassidy is in no doubt that Marx got that right too. "Marx believed that wages were held down by the presence of a 'reserve army' of unemployed workers who attempt to underbid the employed. Reduce the ranks of this army, he said, and wages would rise--just as they have started to do in the last year."

The role of the state

This remarkable essay ends with the writer discussing the relationship of politics to ownership. "Perhaps the most enduring elements of Marx's work is his discussion of where power lies in a capitalist society . . . Marx, of course delighted in declaring that politicians merely carry water for their corporate paymasters. 'The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the bourgeoisie,' he wrote in the 'Manifesto', and he later singled out American politicians saying they had been 'subordinated' to 'bourgeois production' since the days of George Washington. The sight of a President granting shady businessmen access to the White House in return for campaign contributions would have shocked him not at all."

For socialists reading any praise for the works of Karl Marx in such a supporter of American capitalism as the New Yorker magazine is astonishing. It shows that once an enquirer frees himself of the prejudices of orthodox thinking the only way to understand how world capitalism is developing is from the standpoint of Marx's materialist conception of history.

With a little more application Cassidy may even rid himself of the orthodox nonsense that he at present embraces; namely "supply and demand curves, production functions and game theory", and realise that Marx's labour theory of value is the view that best explains production, exploitation and surplus value.

But let's not look for too much. We still relish his conclusion that "despite his errors, he was a man for whom our economic system held few surprises. His books will be worth reading as long as capitalism endures."

Richard Donnelly

The Cost of Plum Positions

Many American ambassadors get their position by donating money to a political party, the more the donation, the better the location. But what bang do you get for your buck? Margaret Carlson (Toronto Star, Feb 22 2014) asked the question, " how stupid can you be and still be a US ambassador?" George Tsunis, Obama's appointment to Norway didn't even bother to look that country up on Wikipedia to find out that it is not a monarchy. He also managed to call the Progress Party, part of the ruling coalition, an extremist group with fringe elements. Mercifully, he was stopped by senator McCain before he created an international incident. He is an ace at fundraising, however and brought in almost one million dollars for Obama in 2012. Thirty-seven per cent of his appointees are not career diplomats narrowly trailing Ford and Reagan who weighed in at thirty-eight per cent. The cost of plum positions is going up, however. George Bush sent Henry Catto to London in 1989 for contributions in the low six figures. Nowadays, appointees to Rome, Paris, and Stockholm raised a total of $5 million. Just another sorry side of our system. John Ayers

It's Not All Gloom

The picture painted by the popular press of a Britain living through a period of harsh austerity doesn't apply to everyone. 'According to an authoritative new survey by the Hurun Global Rich List, Britain now has an astonishing 56 sterling billionaires. London already boasts more than 30. ...... Around half of Britain's super-rich have come from abroad, attracted to the lifestyle, private schools and the rule of law. There is also less scrutiny of tax and general business affairs than in some jurisdictions.' (Daily Mail, 7 March) We trust such cheering news will enable you to cope better with your mortgage and rent arrears. RD

CONS'IS'TENT INCONS'IS'TENCY

From the December 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Saturday afternoon meeting of the Socialist Party at Glasgow's Exchange Square was "honoured" by the attendance of some members of the International Socialists who, not having a meeting of their own to bore people with, decided to latch on to ours instead. Immediately, our speakers were taken to task for not doing anything about "the current urgent problem facing the working class".

"Which urgent problem?"

"Unemployment. You never protest against these problems!"

"Wrong", the speaker replied. "That's precisely what I am doing this afternoon: protesting not merely against unemployment, but all the problems the working class as a whole suffer directly under capitalism".

"But that's not positive enough. What you should be doing is getting out on the streets and marching. That gets definite results."

"Yes, sore feet. Don't you understand the basic ABC of capitalism? Employers employ workers to produce commodities. If they can't be sold on the world's markers to realize a profit for the owner, then he will have no alternative but to close down his factory."

"We would occupy that factory", the critic asserted.

"They tried that in an Italian car factory", said the SPGB speaker. "Then they made a brilliant discovery: you can't eat tyres or drink petrol. So they simply came back out".

"But they would be assisted by their fellow trade-unionists".

"All that would result in", said the speaker, "would be a factory full of unpaid night-watchmen". He added, on the question of the so-called "right to work": "Unemployment can't be solved by making slavish demands for an alleged 'right' which doesn't exist. Neither can any tangible difference be made by screeching at trade-union leaders or throwing sticks at Callaghan's car. How illogical can you be in the IS? First you urge the workers to vote the Labour Party into power - then, when they do get in, you attack them for doing what you voted them into power for: running British capitalism!"

"Tactics, comrade, tactics", the IS member explained. And, with a straight face, he said: "What you've got to do is show the workers the utter futility of voting for the Labour Party, by telling them to vote Labour. That way they experience how awful the anti-working class Labour Party is".

Trying to prevent himself reeling dizzily off the platform, the SPGB speaker said: "What will happen if you put up candidates at the next election? Will you urge workers to vote Labour in constituencies where you are contesting?" This brought the discussion round to the fact that, despite their avowed anti-parliamentarianism, IS were contesting the election at Walsall. This mental somersault was defended with the claim that workers, disgusted with the National Front, would turn instead to them!

The speaker told the audience that the SPGB had tried to debate with the National Front but the meeting was broken up by "freedom-lovers" who were against the free expression of opinions - including members of IS. Apparently as the only reply they could think of, one of the IS group said: "Do you mean that you actually debated with people like the National Front?"

"We debated with IS too", said the speaker. "The way to defeat organizations like the National Front is not to suppress them but to have them express their views and then expose them for the gibberish they are. Once armed with Socialist knowledge, no worker will allow himself to be led up every blind alley demanding the thousand-and-one 'urgent' reforms which only ensure that capitalism stumbles on a little longer".

Exit IS members shaking their muddled heads, perhaps trying to clear them.

Tone.

No Shortcuts

Society is divided into two classes: the working class, doing all the labour; and the idle class, living on the fruits of labour. Workers resistance to capitalist exploitation is as old as the working class itself. The first unions were formed with the greatest sacrifice on the part of workers. Their immediate goal was to unite workers and to organise their collective fight for better wages and working conditions. They marked a great step forward for the working class: its passage from a scattered and weak state to the first attempts at class organisation.  The unions are the broadest and most important mass organisations of the working class. They are an indispensable weapon in the workers’ struggle against capitalist exploitation. But as the class struggle developed, the limits of the unions became clearer. Left to themselves the unions tended to withdraw into the fight for reforms alone, and to remain outside the revolutionary political struggle.

Karl Marx said: “Trade Unions work well as centers of resistance against the encroachments of capital. They fail partially from an injudicious use of their power. They fail generally from limiting themselves to a guerrilla warfare against the effects of the existing system, instead of simultaneously trying to change it, instead of using their organized forces as a lever for the final emancipation of the working class, that is to say, the ultimate abolition of the wages system.”

Marx correctly pin-pointed the weakness of all trade unionism. What every worker must realise is that the  trade union struggle is not fighting causes  but only symptoms. We are fighting against the effects of the system as Marx points out, and not against the system itself.  Not merely that, but they also envisage the continuation of the capitalist system. 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. Every wage increase that is won by the workers is eventually offset by the employers by more intensive work, by stricter supervision etc. and by a general price increase. So that, usually the worker is back to from where he started. What all workers must understand is that their misery is due to exploitation carried on by the capitalist class. Trade unionism merely restricts their struggle to attempts at lessening 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.

Regardless of their flaws, economic organisations of workers are a necessity and we do not, of course, oppose trade union struggles or refuse to participate in them. The unions are a powerful weapon in the workers’ hands to defend their immediate interests.  But it became necessary for the working class to create a higher form of organisation in the struggle to do away with capitalism. It is only when socialist ideas began to take hold in the working class that the awareness also of the need to overthrow capitalism by means of revolutionary political struggle begn to grow and the ensuing creation of a socialist party.

 There are no shortcuts to the socialist revolution. The social revolution is an immense task and should not be dreamt of if  workers cannot have their own organisations. The unions’ role is to defend the workers’ interests and to act as schools of class struggle while the Socialist Party strives for strong unions defending the workers against capitalist exploitation so as to develop, strengthen and unite a current of class consciousness through agitation and propaganda with the purpose of turning trade unions away from sectional interests and into class organisations,  and to build unity in action and solidarity among workers and unions, and educate their members in the spirit of class struggle.

Names and terms have frequently given rise to bitter disputes  so let us be clear in our understanding.  A Socialist means a man or a woman who recognises the class war between the worker and the possessing class as the historic outcome of the capitalist system and its economic and social antagonisms which it engenders and fosters. .

One class—the capitalist class—owns and controls the economic resources of the world. That class, for its own protection and perpetuation in power, subjects all institutions to its own interests. Capitalist ownership of industries had its origin in the unfolding of conditions which hastened the downfall of the feudal system, and the advent of the capitalist class to power. The feudal lords had to surrender their scepter to the ascending capitalist class. Capitalism has now  fulfilled its historical mission and socialised all aspects of labour,  and has grown to  become an obstacle for the progress of society. It thus compels the working-class to take power into its own hands and, in the interests of the whole of society, to abolish the form of appropriation of wealth which prevails in capitalism.

The working class alone is interested in the removal of inequality, and that can only be accomplished by a revolution. The workers, in their collectivity, must take over and operate all the essential industrial institutions, the means of production and distribution, for the well-being of all. This can only be by the complete control by the whole people, thus abolishing the class State and the wages system, and constituting a co-operative commonwealth. Private property in social necessities must be abolished root and branch. It is not enough to seize the means of production and abolish private property. It is necessary to abolish the basic condition of modern exploitation, wage slavery, and that act brings forth the succeeding measures of reorganisation that would never be invoked without the first step.

The trade unions are more than merely a means to win a few cents an hour more in wages or a few minutes a day less of work; they are an army of emancipation in the making. At heart and in their daily action the trade unions’ unchangeable policy is to withhold from the exploiters all they have the power to. The day will come when they will pit their strength  against the parasitic employing class to end the wages system forever and set up the long-hoped-for era of social justice. That is the true meaning of the trade union movement. The unity of the workers is the merger of political parties or trade unions because  of the need for mass action.

Who are our enemies? Who are our friends? This is a question of the first importance for the revolution.The government is an executive committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.  Our enemies are the monopoly capitalist class and all those in league with them. The Labour Party is not “the lesser evil”. The Labour Party is the greater danger!