Our Aim is Socialism

 

Our concern is with substituting the common social ownership of the means of life for the present system of class ownership. Our aim is to abolish the exploitation of man by man. There can be no peaceful gradual transformation of capitalism into socialism, as preached by the reformists, because of the opposite natures of the very foundations of capitalist and socialist society and of the antagonistic interests of labour and capital.  Members of the Socialist Party are all agreed as to the general object for which they are striving – the ownership of all the means of production by the community; that community to be organised on the most democratic basis possible.  The point of difference here between socialists and anarchists is not on the form of organisation of the future society, or of the details of such organisation. It is not that the Socialist Party wish to impose on the future society a huge bureaucratic system, spreading its octopus-like tentacles across all social life, crushing all individuality, and reducing every detail of existence to rule and plan. The difference is the strategy of achieving our ends. The Socialist Party says the struggle to secure the social ownership of the means of production should be accomplished by first the capture of the state machine and then its coercive function withering out.

The first condition of success for socialism is that its adherents should explain its aim and its essential characteristics clearly, so that they can be understood by every one. We must do away with many misunderstandings circulated by our opponents. The main idea of socialism is simple.

The Socialist Party believe that society is divided into two great classes by the present form of property-holding, and that one of these classes, the wage-earning, the proletariat, is obliged to hire themselves out to the owners of the means of production and distribution. The multitude of people possess nothing. They can only live by their work, and since, in order to work, they need access to expensive equipment, which they have not got, and raw materials, which they have not got, they are forced to put themselves in the hands of another class that owns the means of production, the land, the factories, the machines, and the raw material. And naturally, the capitalist and possessing class, taking advantage of its power, makes the working people, the non-owning class,  pay a large forfeit. It does not rest content after it has been reimbursed for the advances it has made and has repaired the wear and tear on the machinery. Classes and class rule and their attendant progress and poverty, misery, turmoil and strife, are inherent in the capitalist system.

Why? Simply because one set of men owns the technology with which wealth is produced, while another set uses them, and there is an irrepressible conflict over the division of the product. By virtue of the individual ownership of the social instruments of production, one capitalist may exploit the labour of a million working people and become a billionaire, while millions of workers struggle through life in penury and want, towards a bleak and barren old age, to find rest at last in a care-home and eventually, the undertakers.

This rich and resourceful world should be free from the scourge of poverty but it never will be until the private ownership of the means of sustaining life is abolished and society is organised on the basis of common ownership. It is for this great  change, this worldwide social revolution, that the socialists of all countries are organising.It is not to reform the evils of the day, but to abolish the social system that produces them, that the Socialist Party is organised. It is the party, not of reform, but of revolution, knowing that the capitalist system has had its day and that a new social order, based upon a new system of industrial democracy. The working class are beginning to spell solidarity and to pronounce socialism. They are yearning for emancipation from wage-slavery and they are crusading against the ignorance and the prejudices of their fellow workers people. Common ownership is the revolutionary demand of the World Socialist Movement. Its promotion is one of education and is perfectly orderly and peaceable. The workers must be taught to unite and vote together as a class in support of the Socialist Party, the party that represents them as a class. Private ownership will give way to collective ownership, and production for profit to production for use; the wage system will disappear, and with it the poverty, misery and crime that wage-slavery breeds. A new era will dawn on human progress and the civilisation of humanity.

Words

 

Although we are in favour of keeping the term “socialism” in our party campaigns, we shouldn’t let ourselves get too hung up about words—any word can become abused and misused; indeed you only need to think how the term “democracy” has been rendered almost meaningless through its use by state and corporate mouthpieces.

 

Descriptions such as socialism, communism, anarcho-communism, social or industrial democracy, resource-based economy and cooperative commonwealth are all valid, if used meaningfully, for the sort of society we seek to see. There is nothing to stop us using a multitude of words and descriptions for what we stand for in our political activities. What’s important is that we get our ideas over as effectively as possible. There is no reason why we should constantly shout “socialism” from the material we produce and distribute, and anyway, much of the time we don’t.

 

However, for many many people the words “socialism” and “socialist” hold the sort of vision of an alternative, free society that we stand for. This makes it a strength, and something that will attract people who consider themselves politically aware or socialist to the World Socialism Movement. The title “socialist” connects us to the long tradition of revolutionary ideas and movements of which we are a part.

 

The important thing would seem to be that socialists take an open-minded and non-dogmatic approach to the way we present and develop our ideas. Discussions like this should hopefully stimulate us to think how best to spread the message of self-emancipation and common ownership. 

 

The Socialist Party is the one party (together with our companion parties in the World Socialist Movement) which stands, and has always stood, for socialism: a state-free, money-free, class-free world community, democratically controlled by the whole of society and with free access to the goods and services people need to live as true human beings. The Socialist Party must be proud of its name and now, more than ever before, must stand by it.

 

Whatever the reason for the association of the left with red, why does the Socialist Party still use this colour? If we are to change people’s stereotypical perception of socialism and socialists—which is difficult enough as it is—then we need to change how people view us rather than reinforcing what they already believe. The red flag was first used as a revolutionary emblem in the French Revolution, in 1792 when the monarchy was overthrown. in one of his articles on the revolutionary events in France in 1848 (Class Struggles in France 1848-1850) Marx referred to the red flag as being the flag of “the most extreme subversive party”. So too, the first English translation of the Communist Manifesto appeared in an extreme Chartist paper, the Red Republican. The Paris Commune of 1871 adopted the red flag as its official flag, so again Marx wrote about “the Red Flag, symbol of the Republic of Labour, flying over the Hotel de Ville” (Civil War in France). The words of the song The Red Flag (which used to be sung at pre-WWI Socialist Party meetings such as those to commemorate the Paris Commune, before the song got hijacked by the Labour Party) were written by James Connell in 1889. One line reads “we must not change its colour now”

 

To solve the many problems confronting humanity what is needed is a change in the basis of world society from existing class ownership to a world in which the Earth’s resources have become the common heritage of all. Continuous development of the world’s capacity to produce wealth could be said that sufficient plenty for all people on Earth has been produced and society of common ownership and production to meet human needs, not profit can now replace capitalism. 

Highland Hypocrisy (2000)

From the May 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

Spare a tear for that hard-up aristocrat John MacLeod of MacLeod. The poor man’s castle is badly in need of repair so he has had to put on the market his beloved Cuillins. This is an area of real estate consisting of 35 square miles of mountain range, bordered by 14 miles of coastline and two salmon rivers. So desperate for the readies is the poor fellow that he is prepared to let it go for a mere £10 million.

 “I regard the Cuillins as priceless”, he said. “They are part of my soul and putting them up for sale is an extremely painful experience. They are my ancestors. Our clan grew out of the history of the Cuillins” (Times, 23 March).

What the fellow doesn’t tell us of course is that, like all Clan Chiefs, his ancestors stole the land in the first place. The ownership of the land was vested in the whole clan until the Chiefs stole it from them. It is a process that is well-documented by Karl Marx in Capital:

“The Highland Celts were organised in clans, each of which was the owner of the land on which it was settled. The representative of the clan, its chief or ‘great man’, was only the titular owner of this property, just as the Queen of England is the titular owner of all the national soil. When the English government succeeded in suppressing the intestine wars of these ‘great men’, and their constant incursions into the Lowland plains, the Chiefs of the clans by no means gave up their time-honoured trade as robbers; they only changed its form. On their authority they transformed their nominal right into a right of private property, and as this brought them into collision with their clansmen, resolved to drive them out by open force” (Volume I, page 681).

The journalist John MacLeod mockingly describes how the title of “MacLeod of MacLeod” is another piece of robbery as the man exulting in that grandiose title was actually born John Wolridge-Gordon. Commenting on the proposed sale of the estate, he digs up some edifying information about how a previous MacLeod “great man” tried to raise money:

“In 1739 The MacLeod kidnapped dozens of his tenancy and attempted to sell them as slaves to Barbados” (Herald, 4 April). 

Richard Donnelly

Less Tax or More Revolt

 

In spite of the imminent world recession, many companies are managing to maintain and even increase their profits. Taxation is always in the news and it got special attention with most of the candidates for the Tory leadership and to become the new prime minister offering tax cuts galore.

 The Socialist Party states that it does not matter to the working class whether taxes are high or low, or whether they are direct, like present day PAYE, or indirect, like the duties on alcohol and tobacco. Many greet this with astonishment and unbelief; how, they ask, could anyone be so blind as not to see that workers would be better off with lower taxes? At first glance the case they make seems self-evident. If the PAYE deduction from wages goes up or if taxes put prices up surely the workers are worse off? And if PAYE or prices go down surely workers are better off? We can at once concede that at the moment when PAYE goes up or the cost of living goes up the workers are that much worse off: but what we should be concerned with is the longer-term, continuing, situation. And the fact is that, subject to variations due to other, quite different causes, the wages and salaries of the working class as a whole become adjusted to changes in PAYE and changes in the cost of living.

What really matters to workers is their “take-home pay” after deduction of PAYE and Social Security contributions, and what it will buy. It is this purchasing power that continually adjusts itself; not automatically, but through the struggles of workers inside and outside the trade unions, struggles influenced by the varying levels of unemployment. Government “wage restraint” propaganda and policies also play a part.

When purchasing power is reduced by higher tax deductions or price rises, workers react by seeking higher wages. When there are tax deductions or prices fall the workers’ resistance to pressure from the employers weakens. 

There is plenty of evidence from past experience to show how take-home pay has adjusted to tax changes, and to changes in the cost of living. So we are on the solid ground of experience in asserting that taxation is not a working class issue, not forgetting that this presupposes that the workers continue the struggle to maintain and increase wages as far as conditions allow.

For the politicians aspiring to represent the interests of capitalists the position is quite different. Having exploited the workers to the fullest extent, having got maximum output at the lowest wage they can induce workers to accept they have to pay, out of their profits, the cost of maintaining the State apparatus, the armed forces and so on. The burden of taxation falls on them. It follows that as a class they have very good cause to keep government expenditure as low as possible so that taxation can be correspondingly low. The workers have no such interest.

 

There are two conditions necessary for the establishment of socialism; the development of the productive forces to the point where they can provide an abundance, and acceptance by the world’s working class of the case for socialism. Technological and scientific progress has for some decades now ensured the attainment of the first condition. Under capitalism, these developments and inventions are not utilised for the good of mankind.

 However, in a socialist society, the fruits of human ingenuity will be able to benefit everybody. Technological progress will mean social and individual advancement. The soul-destroying work has not turned the workers into robots— that is, unthinking machines which simply respond to instructions. Society is too complex to be operated by robots; instead it is living, feeling and thinking workers who run society. The very existence of the Socialist Party shows that socialism is by no means a non-existent drive in working class politics. It is no good looking to historical materialism to bring about progress towards socialism; it is people, not history, who will carry out the revolution. The second condition for the establishment of socialism means a world-wide majority of convinced socialists, and this is what socialist education aims at achieving. 

The ideas of the Socialist Party are difficult to oppose: there are no solutions under capitalism. Socialism is the answer. Under the present-day system of society, where the tools of production are privately owned, a large majority, through their lack of ownership of these tools, are economically forced to seek employment. That means that these people are exploited and as such, never receive the full fruits of their labour. This causes much discontent and gives rise to a common feeling that work is nauseating and a “ necessary evil ” and therefore this sharp division between employment and play. To a Socialist, this is just another ugly feature of capitalism, which will remain till the machinery of wealth production is converted to common ownership. Then men and women will be released from their wage slavery, and work will become regarded in its correct perspective, that is, there will be joy in creation. Society will be producing wealth for use and not for sale and profit as it is today.

It is not people who require to be reformed, (unless one believes the Salvation Army.) It is the social system. Each reform is a patch on the system’s fabric — and not, as some people suppose, a nail in its coffin. That is why the thousands of large and small reforms cannot really change things very much—they leave the system unimpaired and even refurbished a little. Benevolence is one thing, the abolition of poverty another. The best of social reforms does not, and cannot, overturn the factor that gives some people low wages and others high profits, any more than it is able to control or predict economic crises.

Real improvement in living means creating the right conditions—and before that, doing away with the wrong ones. The Socialist Party’s unvarying answer to reformers sounds unpalatable and even hard-hearted, but it is true. Either capitalism is abolished or it remains; and while it remains, the perennial difficulties of working-class life will be there too. Capitalism sets the limits and reformism, the product of that system cannot break outside it. Only by social revolution can the working class escape from the ills which they seek palliatives.

Our Socialist Message

 

We agree with the need for a genuine socialist party, but insist that this should be on a sound basis, namely a clear definition of what socialism is and a clear refusal to advocate reforms of capitalism. We are not saying that workers shouldn’t try to get the best they can out of capitalism, but that’s the job of trade unions and other similar organisations, not of a socialist political party. In our view, the job of a socialist party is to advocate “a complete and utter change of society” to socialism and nothing but this. History shows that a party that advocates reforms inevitably becomes the prisoner of its reform-minded supporters and eventually ends up giving only lip-service to the socialist transformation of society. Why do you think that instead of the Labour Party gradually changing capitalism, as some of its members once used to want, the opposite has happened and capitalism has gradually changed the Labour Party—into what it is today and which many feel is no longer worthy of support? Why make the same mistake again?

 

 We are very emphatic on this point. The clear duty of a genuine socialist party is to work for real socialism. It has no justification for existence apart from that. The only work a socialist can do is to teach socialism. We can never advocate anything that conflicts with socialism for that is to obscure socialism and to impede oneself as a socialist. 

 

Suppose someone actively campaigns for a particular reform, what then?

 

In the first place the socialist aim has receded, however temporarily, into a secondary position. Socialism is not being taught — the working class crying for bread is given— a stone.

 

Secondly, such work that needs no socialist party at all.

 

Thirdly, the particular reform worked for will not appreciably affect the condition of the working class as such.

 

Fourthly,  it will therefore have wasted the working-class strength concentrated upon realising it.

 

Fifthly, it will, because it has effected no material improvement in working class conditions, have bred disappointment, and, from disappointment, apathy.

 

And finally, sixthly, it will have made existing confusion worse confounded in the minds of the working class. 

 

Therefore, we contend that teaching socialism and explaining the phenomena of industrial development in the light of socialism is the proper work of a socialist movement. Many think we are too narrow, too doctrinaire, without regard to the feelings of members of other political parties. We are only interested in the maintenance of truth. Truth can only be maintained inside the logical method. If we over-leap logic we over-leap ourselves and land in a bog of confusion and disappointment. Therefore, the truth, even if it means that we become for the time as voices crying in the wilderness.

 

The cause of working-class misery is private ownership of the means of life. The interests of the workers, who do not own the means of life, are opposed to the interests of the capitalists, who do own them. This clash of interests is the class struggle. These things continue because the working class are unaware.

 

Although their interests continually clash with those of their masters, they do not understand that this is inevitable. Nor do they understand that their masters' ownership of the means of life is at the bottom of the trouble.

 

Now why, with this continual conflict of interest, do the working class remain ignorant? And why are they so desperately apathetic? Is their ignorance not because the truth has not been told? And is their apathy not born largely of disappointment with the results of past efforts of their class to secure some amelioration of their condition?

We need not enquire for the moment into the honesty of working-class teachers and leaders. We need only deal with the teaching and leading.

The school instruction of the working class is not such as would enable the child to get a glimmering of the truth of the position. It would be surprising if the capitalist class, dominant in the legislature (because dominance there is essential to the maintenance of their economic ascendancy) should take steps to instruct the children of the working class concerning working-class poverty. So we will consider the teaching and leading the workers receive alter they have entered the industrial and political arenas.

Now do the majority of working-class teachers explain that the working-class position is inevitable under present conditions? That there is no name given under heaven whereby the working class may be saved except socialism? That until socialism there can be no cessation of the clash of interests between capital and labour? That the class struggle persists unflaggingly? 

Leave out of account those who do not claim to be socialists. If socialism is the only remedy, and they are not socialists, their teaching cannot be correct because they do not teach socialism. 

 

What of those who profess socialism? Our answer is that although they talk of it occasionally, they do not teach it.

The important thing in a teacher of socialism is that it should always be socialism that he or she teaches. If one does not explain every manifestation of class conflict in the light of  socialist philosophy, one will be  little, if any, better than the non-socialist mis-leader. The teaching is neither logical nor consistent. One is either a fraud or a fool. 

 

These be hard words but they are not bitter. Working class ignorance and apathy which must be dispelled before socialism can be realised, so far from being effectively combated by working-class leaders and teachers are contributed to by most of them. For example, if we were to tell the unemployed that unemployment must last as long as capitalism and were then to recommend them to send a deputation to the representatives of the capitalists to ask that the capitalists should abolish unemployment, we should either be a knave or a fool. We should have cut ourselves off from logic and landed the audience in a bog of confusion and disappointment. We argue that capitalist representatives are in control of the political machinery to conserve their own interests as against those of the working class and that we must regard capitalist representatives always as a hostile force against whom war must be waged unceasingly until they are utterly vanquished.  And if we suspend hostilities and enter into alliance with them, we land in the bog of confusion and disappointment.

If we assume that poverty and misery must last till socialism, that until socialism nothing can materially or permanently affect the position; if we say that palliatives are therefore of little use, so little use indeed that we must have a party that shall concentrate upon the thing that matters (socialism) rather than the things that do not matter (palliatives); and assure that our organisation, founded because palliatives were not good enough, shall not concentrate working-class effort upon the realisation of snake-oil cure and engulf fellow-workers in the pit of impotence and despair.