The choice is yours

Estimates of up to 150,000 people participated in yesterdays protest. It was heartening to see so many plebians marching together - it reveals the workers can still be mobilised around issues they feel are important. We can draw comfort from the fact that the workers cannot now be dismissed as totally apathetic and that people can unite in common cause. The capitalist class started this phase of the class war with their austerity programmes, and we’re all in it together whether we want to be or not. But from our experience - and the Socialist Party has had over a 100 years' experience of observing campaigns and demonstrations and protests around every imaginable kind of reform demand being the oldest existing socialist organisation in Britain - we can safely say with a certain degree of confidence that todays demonstration is just one of hundreds over the years that address the symptoms, not the cause of the problem, and will make no significant difference to the established order. That fact is hard to accept but as Diderot wrote "We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter." 

Across the world there are literally hundreds of thousands of campaigns, protest groups and charities all pursuing tens of thousands of issues, and their work involves many millions of sincere workers who care passionately about their individual causes and give their free time to support them unquestioningly. Many will have campaigned on some single issue for years on end with no visible result; others will have celebrated minor victories.



Two things stand out. Firstly, that many of the problems around us are rooted in the way our society is organised for production, and are problems we have been capable of solving for quite some time, though never within the confines of a profit-driven market system. Secondly, that if all of these well-meaning people with their good intentions had  directed all their energy - all those of billions of hours expended on their single issues - to the task of overthrowing the system that creates a great deal of the problems around us we would have established a world without borders, without waste or want or war, in which we would all have free access to the benefits of civilisation. 

 It's simple! Every aspect of our lives is subordinated to the requirements of profit - from the moment you brush your teeth in the morning with the toothpaste you saw advertised on TV until you crawl into your bed at night. Pick up a newspaper and try locating any problem reported there outside of our "can't pay - can't have" system. Crime, the health service, poverty, drug abuse, hunger, disease, homelessness, unemployment, war, insecurity - the list is endless. All attract their campaign groups, all struggling to address these problems, and all of these problems arising because of the inefficient way we organise our world for production.

Capitalism constantly throws up issues that demand action amongst those who are concerned and by many people who think of themselves as socialists. As a result, protest tends to become a demand for an “improved,better model” of capitalism that leaves the long-term reasons for protest intact. This has been the history of protest. Protest tends to set a stage for further protest and further demonstrations. Though the issues may vary the message stays the same: “We demand that governments do this, or that or the other!” The spectacle of thousands demanding that governments act on their behalf is a most reassuring signal to those in power that their positions of control are secure. In this way, repeated demonstrations do little more than confirm the continuity of the system. The point is to change society.

Unlike many other groups protesting and out to reform capitalism, to beg governments to be just a little less nasty and a little bit nicer and to ask our masters for a few more crumbs from the cake, the Socialist Party are not into the politics of compromise. We demand the whole bakery! We demand the wheat fields! We urge our fellow workers to stop belittling yourselves by making the same stale demands. Join instead in campaigning for a system of society where there are no leaders, no classes, no states or governments, no borders, no force or coercion; a world where the earth's natural and industrial resources are commonly owned and democratically controlled and where production is freed from the artificial constraints of profit and used to the benefit of all; a world of free access to the necessaries of life. 

All this doesn't mean we dismiss demonstrations, especially peaceful ones, as futile. A million people marched against the Iraq invasion in. It didn’t stop Tony Blair launching an illegal war but anti-war protesters did destroy Tony Blair’s credibility and any legitimacy he claimed for the invasion. The SPGB welcome any upsurge in the militancy and resistance of our class and the Socialist Party does not deny the necessity nor minimise the importance of the worker keeping up the struggle to maintain wage-levels protecting pensions and resisting cuts. If workers always laid down to the demands of their exploiters without resistance they would not be worth their salt, nor be fit for waging the class struggle to put an end to exploitation.

 But we also know, from bitter experience, that work of a more patient, more political kind is also needed. The class war must be fought but we must also seek to stop the skirmishing of the class struggle by winning the class war. That means that the working class as a whole must understand the issues, and organise and fight for these ends themselves. Socialists have to make clear the alternative is not mere utopianism, but an important ingredient in inspiring successful struggle. The Socialist Party case is that understanding is a necessary condition for socialism, not desperation and despair and we see our job as to shorten the time, to speed up the process - to act as a catalyst. This contrasts with those who seek to substitute the party for the class or who see the party as a vanguard which must undertake alone the sectarian task of leading the masses forward.

The class war is far from over but it can only end with the dispossession of the owning minority and the consequent disappearance of classes and class-divided society. Only by looking to the political situation, the reality of class ownership and power within capitalism, and organising to make themselves a party to the political battle in the name of common ownership for their mutual needs, will a general gain come to workers. While union members must understand the strength of unity they must also realise their weakness in the economic field against the power of the employers, then it will turn to the facts of its situation for a solution and find that the way to salvation lies through organisation for control of the political power. Parliamentary action is revolutionary when on the floor of parliament it raises the call of the discontented; and when it reveals the capitalist system's inability to satisfy the workers wants.  Parliament is to be valued not for the petty reforms obtainable through it, but because through the control of the machinery of government by a socialist majority, workers will be in a position to establish a socialist society.