The socialist case is from its
beginnings mankind had organized socially for survival and for the
satisfaction of its needs. All societies—primitive communism,
slavery, feudalism, capitalism—were founded upon the manner in
which humanity set about organizing to produce for the satisfaction
of its needs: what Marx had termed the mode of production. On the
different bases of different modes of production, he had found
necessary different institutions, different customs and conventions,
different religions, different laws, different attitudes and
concepts, and different kinds of government. Always, however, the
distinguishing feature between societies was none of these by itself,
but the mode of production which gave rise to them all.
Capitalist society is
based on the ownership of all of the means of life by a small class.
The remainder, the majority - wage-workers, all more or less poorly
paid. This basic class-structure had never changed within capitalism;
the techniques of production might have altered, but not the basis.
The consequences of
capitalism in the form of social troubles were innumerable. War and
its horrifying weapons, economic crises, poverty and its results,
disease, bad housing, crime: all these and countless other problems
were direct results of the system which was concerned only with sale
and profit. The only standard by which a society could be judged was
whether it satisfied the needs of the people living within it, and by
this measure capitalism—for all its spectacular achievements
—failed completely.
If it were true that
social problems were the outcome of the system itself, and not of
mismanagement of it then it followed that all policies of reform were
useless, since they aimed to abolish effects while retaining the
cause.
The capitalist class do
not rule by their own strength. Many of them had never seen, had
little knowledge of, the factories, land, workshops and enterprises
which they owned. Their ownership was maintained and protected by the
State, which had no other function. It was in this coercive agency,
with its fighting forces and penal systems, that capitalist power
resided.
It
followed, therefore, that any body of people wishing to change the
ownership basis of society must go to the place where ownership was
kept: that is, it could only seek to take hold of the powers of
government as the means of taking away capitalist ownership. This is
the aim of the Socialist Party. Its policy is to make socialists, for
a conscious and politically organized working class to go to the
State and make the ownership of the means of life common to
everybody.
In
the socialist society, thus based on common ownership, the
competition which leads to wars, crises and chaos, would have ended.
So would poverty; there would be no wages, no money barrier to the
satisfaction of needs. The aim of society would be simply for all
people to share, according to their needs, in all that the earth
produced.
The
Socialist Party's case is that the problems of the present-day world
originate in the capitalist economic system, and that a co-operative
world could only be established on a different ownership basis. While
private ownership existed, politicians—delinquent or otherwise
—could only when they were in power carry out the requirements of
capitalism. The history of the Labour Party, which had once had a
strong pacifist strain, but when in office had instituted military
conscription and the biggest armaments drive in history. Its members
were not drunk with power, but were simply having to prepare for war
because they had undertaken running the system which led to war.
The
proposition that wars were caused by delinquent politicians was, in
fact, capitalist nonsense; people had gone to war precisely because
they had been told that the wars were begun by irresponsible and
wicked rulers who must be opposed. It was equally silly to say that
people were coerced to work by police and armies; they went to work
because, having no ownership of the means of life, they could only
live by selling their labour-power.
To
change society there must be a body of people who knew what was
needed and how it was to be done. To the socialist, causes has always
to be sought. The whole of history showed that, so far from the
nature of government being unimportant, every class which had aspired
to change society in its own interests had had to gain control of the
powers of government This was the real lesson from countless
centuries of political history; this was the aim of socialists, who
sought to replace capitalism with socialism and to do so by going to
the seat of capitalist power.
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