“What’s the alternative?
“What’s the alternative?” As capitalism remains mired in crisis, and
criticisms of the system become more commonplace and compelling,
expect to hear this question asked more and more. It is often used
politically and rhetorically – because every sensible person is supposed
to know the answer. The idea that “There Is No Alternative”, or TINA, is
one of Thatcher’s enduring political legacies. It will often be asserted
angrily in political debate, which is revealing. No one feels the need to
angrily assert the truth of the law of gravity. No one, then, should feel
the need to angrily assert the fact that there is no alternative if there isn’t
one. They do because there is.
The Trades Union Congress (TUC) has organised this national
demonstration against the government’s spending cuts. It has been
called a ‘March For The Alternative’. Which sounds great. At last, after
decades of ‘TINA’, an alternative! Unfortunately, the TUC’s alternative
looks much the same as ‘business as usual’. The alternative, according
to them, is ‘Jobs, growth, justice’. This is indistinguishable from what
every political party in this country, whether of the left or right, promises
every election time. We should not be too surprised by this. The TUC,
like all trade unions, exists to win a better deal for wage-slaves. This is a
laudable aim, and we support it. But we do not just want to win a better
deal for wage-slaves. We want to abolish slavery. We are wage-slavery
abolitionists. As one socialist famously put it, we ought not to exaggerate
to ourselves what these trade-union struggles and demonstrations and
‘actions’ can achieve. “We ought not to be exclusively absorbed in these
unavoidable guerrilla fi ghts incessantly springing up from the never
ceasing encroachments of capital or changes of the market.” Instead,
we need to organise for something new.
That was Marx in 1865. Unfortunately, his advice has been mostly
ignored, including by those counting themselves as his followers, ever
since. In the words of the linguist and social critic Noam Chomsky,
“the effort to overcome ‘wage-slavery’ [has] been going on since the
beginnings of the industrial revolution, [and] we haven’t advanced an
inch. In fact, we’re worse off than we were a hundred years ago in terms
of understanding the issues.”
Chomsky is right, and it’s the reason we in The Socialist Party devote
so much of our time and energy to promoting an understanding of the
issues. We seem, in fact, to be the only political organisation in this
country to take this task at all seriously.
The alternative, then, is not the amelioration of our suffering under the
wages system. It is the abolition of modern slavery – the emancipation
of labour. Under slavery, you are sold to a master once and for all. Under
wage slavery, you hire yourself out by the hour or the week or the month.
The basic relationship between master and slave has not changed.
We need to get rid of the master, take the means of making a living
under our collective ownership and control, and organise our own lives,
democratically, and on the basis of freely organised, freely given work.
In a word, the alternative is Socialism.
Object:
The establishment of a system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interest of the whole community.
The Socialist Party
Tel: 0207 622 3811. Email: spgb@worldsocialism.org
Website: www.worldsocialism.org/spgb.
This really hits the nail on the head.
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