Encouraging the growth of Socialist ideas

The creation of a socialist society requires two preconditions; firstly that the means of production have been sufficiently developed to be able to meet the material needs of the whole of society and secondly that the majority of the population have an understanding socialist theory and want to put it into practice. Revolutionaries are painfully aware that the first condition has long since been reached and that the second is still far from being realized. Therefore, the task of propagating socialist understanding is not a mere intellectual diversion but our first and primary concern.

To effectively perform this task it is first necessary to consider not only what socialist ideas are but where they come from. It is wrong to think that they arise solely from socialist propaganda; if they did our project would surely be doomed to failure. It is through the alienating nature of life under capitalism that first seeds of socialist understanding are sown amongst the workers. Bitter and sometimes bloody experience of present society’s poverty – not just in the narrow economic sense but also in terms of the quality of lived experience – the germinating factor. But such understanding appears slowly and only in a fragmentary fashion.

As socialists we should be participating in the class struggle – though of course as members of the working class we are involved in this struggle whether we like it or not – to explain the background and mechanism of these struggles and to highlight their unifying points. By making clear the contradictions of capitalism and the fragmentary theories criticising it, we can hope to accelerate the process and act as a catalyst for socialism.

It is not enough to seek comfort in the trueness of our theories; we must return them to their source and test them in practice. Our subject must meet its object

“The role of socialists is not to say what should be done, [..] but it is to say what can be done. [..] In the borderless terms of the world working class we can be guided by the simple experience of our own activities and also by the pressures of political logic.

Let me pose the question: “How can we establish socialism without leaders and governments and vanguards?” The answer is not to do away with leaders, but to do away with followers. How can you have a movement without followers? The answer: by having a movement where everyone knows where they are going. If everyone knows where they are going there is no need to follow the one in front.

But how do you establish such a movement? The answer to that: by spreading political knowledge, ideas. [..] But nobody wants to sit around in rooms forever discussing theory, so what are you going to do about that? The answer is “No, not everyone does want to sit around in rooms forever discussing political theory” and that’s why it is time to take our theory and our knowledge and to pass it on to other workers – not packaged up in books but related to day to day working class experiences. So that people where they live, where they work, wherever they go are in touch with ideas which are not buried in the past but related to the future.

When a majority of workers understand and want the new system of society then – and only then – there will be a revolution the likes of which the world has never seen.”

– Steve Coleman “Julius Martov and the Anti-Bolshevik Approach to Revolution” (talk given at 52 Clapham High Street, 26.12.1982)

Marx’s commonly used “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas” is open to many interpretations some of which are of relevance here.

Firstly, the vanguardist Leninist reading implies that a majority cannot come to a socialist understanding until the material conditions have been transformed. This position is to be rejected. Socialism – the global co-operation of all producers – can only come about through the conscious and willing action of the masses, not forced into existence by decree. The emancipation of the working class is the job of the working class itself.

The most common understanding of Marx’s phrase, that as the capitalist class own the means of mass communication (newspapers, TV channels etc), these are only used to express viewpoints that support the current order is certainly a truism. The main feature is as much a glorification of existing order as the advertisements. Despite its weaknesses (concentrating on the circulation of commodities – whilst virtually ignoring production relations) the work of Guy Debord and the Situationist International sheds some light on this – Gilles Dauvé provides a good critique of the concept of “the spectacle”.

Recent developments in digital media, most notably the rise of the internet, have begun to tip the scale a bit in our favour. Through the use of discussion groups and bulletin boards ideas can be discussed on an international scale and at a level that was previously impossible. To a certain extent this is the public speaking of today – though the importance of face-to-face meetings should not to be dismissed.

The relative ease of which film and audio can now be produced and distributed is another development which can be utilised. Pamphlets and journals are only read by a small majority of the working class, perhaps film and spoken word recordings can reach a wider audience.

There is no doubt that the traditional methods should be continued but we should be supplementing these with considered applications of modern technology.

DARREN POYNTON