April the 1st - But we are no fools

WORLD SOCIALISM

Socialism and nothing less is our aim

 It is true to say that the Socialist Party has not garnered any credible political support. The Socialist Party harbour no illusions that we will get a seat in parliament in the near future. The support for revolutionary politics in the UK is at a low level at present and we are well aware that the vote for ourselves will be tiny, but we feel it necessary to state our views on how revolutionaries should treat parliament and parliamentary seats. Elections provide a snapshot of the political scene and relationship of class forces. Under capitalism, elections permit a periodic measuring of the condition, the will, the combativity, and the political development of the working class. This is usually shown in votes for candidates.

To remain at home and not vote is insufficient. In certain circumstances, people express themselves politically, not by direct voting, but by write-in campaigns, ostentatiously blank ballots, or abstentionism. These apparently negative expressions of opinion can, under certain circumstances, be on the contrary very positive indeed, and such has been the case in some of our own election campaigns.

 Let no worker be deluded by the liberal rhetoric of politicians. The capitalist class and the profit system have not changed their character. Neither have capitalist politicians changed theirs. We must use our ballot to vote out private profit, discarded to join the equally cruel systems of chattel slavery and feudal serfdom of the past.

If you judge the progress of socialist ideas solely in terms of the membership of the Socialist Party then our task does seem to be daunting. Our growth is slow, painfully slow. You can't judge the soundness of an idea by the number of people who hold it or by the speed with which they may take it up. Nor does it follow that we are out of touch with the ideas, hopes and desires of our fellow-workers. We have seen a number of so-called working-class political parties grow into mass organisations to then dwindle away to nothing. They once had numbers, but never possessed a sound socialist membership. The inevitable disillusion that awaits supporters of the political parties that offer to run capitalism and promise to solve its problems paves the way for people to consider socialism as a real alternative.

Unlike other parties, the Socialist Party has never tried to cook the books about its low membership nor made any secret of it. Indeed, it has never made a secret of anything. It holds no meetings from which members of the working class are excluded. All its proceedings and deliberations are in public; under the constant supervision of the members, and therefore — the working class. A socialist political party can have nothing to hide from the working class. No gain can ever accrue to a socialist party from seeking and getting support by subterfuges. Nor can it gain from using political dishonesty. Such tactics would fail in their object. It's not a question of the end justifying the means. The end just cannot be reached by such means. Workers cannot be tricked or coerced. They can only come to such an understanding through their collective experiences as a class. The Socialist Party has adhered to clear principles since its formation and will continue to be hostile to all the sordid and dishonest political tactics which typify the capitalist system, whoever seeks to run it. The Socialist Party, right from its commencement, attacked the policy of political bargaining. We held then, as we do now, that a socialist party must be independent and must be based on the demand for socialism, not on a programme of reforms to be obtained by cooperating with capitalist parties.

The Socialist Party will never flourish just on sympathy. It needs action—your action. We do not accept the permanence of capitalism any more than we accept the fact that the workers’ ideas of society cannot be changed. History shows that social systems change, and that these changes are accomplished by thinking people, and that people’s ideas change with them. The socialist political party will not appear ready-made. Like other social phenomena, it will grow out of social conditions. This raises the whole question of the role of a socialist party in the class struggle. 

At present, there are two obstacles which stand in the way of achieving socialism: the political ignorance of the working class and the control of the machinery of government by the capitalist class. To overcome these obstacles socialist understanding must come first. For this reason, the main activity of a socialist party in its early days must be promotion and propaganda. It must seek to dispel the political ignorance of the working class.

This does not mean that the relation between the party and the working class is to be that of teacher and pupil. Socialist understanding is not something that can be constructed out of nowhere; it must grow out of social conditions. Such understanding—or class consciousness—will not arise purely as a result of the propaganda of the socialist party. Ideas only grip the masses when they are relevant to social conditions. There are any number of cranks around with Utopian schemes for social reconstruction. What distinguishes socialists from them is that socialism is in the material interest of the working class. Socialists have social evolution on their side.

Education is not just a question of learning from books and pamphlets; that is just one aspect of learning from experience. The class experiences of the working class under capitalism will teach it that socialism is the answer to its problems. The party can help this development of socialist understanding by storing up and propagating the past experiences of the working class so that these are easily accessible. The principles of the socialist party will be based on these experiences and will serve as a guide to social issues, being used to expose useless remedies. To carry out this task its members must necessarily have a fairly high degree of political knowledge, know their opponents’ case and be able to expose the flaws in their arguments. In its educational phase, precisely because it is such a phase, a higher degree of political understanding must be required of the members of the party than the working-class need have to establish socialism. As socialist understanding spreads the number and importance of its opponents, and hence also of the need of a knowledge of their arguments, may well decline.

Once socialist understanding grows to any appreciable extent, political conditions will completely change. Socialism will become a political issue. The comparative trivialities of present-day politics will be cast aside. The issue will be capitalism or socialism. With the changed conditions will come a change in the role of the party. It will become the political organisation of the working class which they can use to capture political power.

It is decidedly not the function of a socialist party to lead the working class either in the struggle to live under capitalism or in the struggle for socialism. The working class cannot be led to socialism; it must emancipate itself. A socialist working class will require no leadership; all it requires is organisation to put its aim into effect.

Our principles are based on the logic of our socialist theory; on the knowledge that human society has developed to the point where the potential exists to provide for the material needs of every human being on the planet; on the assumption that, faced with the ultimate reality of capitalism’s failure to solve the ghastly problems that it creates, human beings will take into their common ownership the means of life; that common ownership, and the abolition of all the wasteful activities that capitalism makes necessary, will permit society to function on the basis of free labour in the production of goods and services and free access to the fruits of that production.

That is the socialist proposition, the root of our socialist principles and the Socialist Party does not seek power for itself to enthrone those principles. We seek to promote and spread a knowledge of socialism and whether the majority that ultimately takes the required political action to bring about socialism uses the Socialist Party or some other political vehicle to take power from the political agents of capitalism and establish socialism is of no consequence to us. Our task will be completed with the achievement of socialism; politics will disappear as government over people gives way to a straightforward democratic administration of social production and distribution.

The important thing is the historical proof that the record of reformist political parties gives to socialists: capitalism cannot be made to function in the interests of the great majority of people, the working class, who are the real wealth producers. However long it takes for that truth to percolate the consciousness of the working class, for that period we will suffer the social problems that have been the identification marks of capitalism since its inception.

Being revolutionary does not mean “picking up the gun,” reciting the works of Marx, and proclaiming the Revolution has arrived every time a group of workers walk out on strike or protesters take to the streets. Being “revolutionary” means acting so as to shorten the time left before a successful social revolution in which the working class can assume control over their own lives and constitute themselves as the “dictatorship” over the old exploiting classes. Anything that advances such a social revolution is by definition revolutionary, anything that hinders such a social revolution is anti-revolutionary. What seems like the short-cut to revolution can often in fact be a dead end resulting in frustration, defeat and disillusionment. Our strategy for revolutionary change is to unite all who can be united against the capitalists. Fusing Marxist theory with working-class practice is our central task.

Today, the Socialist Party has the distinction of being the longest existing party of the working class in the UK. Our political journal, the Socialist Standard, despite world wars and slumps, has appeared every month without fail for over a hundred years. For any ordinary political organisation this would be a matter for self-congratulation. For ourselves, however, such longevity is to be regretted as we would rather have seen socialism established long since. However, we shall continue until the job is done.

We shall continue then to carry on our work of propaganda and organisation in our own way, trusting that our party will gain the support of all those in this country who are desirous of achieving unity, and that as time goes by our present party nucleus will widen until such time as its strength will have rendered it in reality as in name the worthy political expression of the whole of the socialist movement. We in the Socialist Party don't like being unique and different. We don't relish the fact that we are a small party which does not include millions of workers in its membership. We are certainly not complacent or proud about the fact that we are small. But we are proud of the fact that we have been consistently correct about what we have said over the years.

We have a world to win but nobody said it would be easy. Those who founded the Socialist Party were aware that the road might be a long one.