Why you should join The Socialist Party

Class struggle and the unions

As long as we have class-divided society we will have class struggle taking in particular the form of go-slows, works-to-rule and strikes. Such action is unpleasant but unavoidable if workers are to defend their living standards and occasionally raise them. Workers do not ask for it and socialists take no pleasure in it. It must be added however that strikes, although necessary for working-class defence, are a severely limited weapon, as the general level of wages is negotiable only within very narrow limits. And it must be stressed above all that trade unions in themselves do nothing to threaten the continued existence of capitalism. On the contrary, as bargaining organisations between employee and employer, they play an essential part in its operation.

Apart from the continual battle between employee and employer over pay and working conditions, capitalism produces a host of other problems, big and small, which it cannot solve. Among the bigger ones are war, unemployment, bad housing, shoddy goods, anxiety, loneliness, boring work, all of which add up to a society of strife and dissatisfaction and a generally insecure and frustrated existence for the majority. Suggestions for improving things come continually from the political parties involved in running the system. The reforms they advocate are often called ‘innovatory’, ‘dynamic’ or even ‘revolutionary’. But once on the statute book they rarely benefit the working class to anything like the extent claimed and, on close examination, can usually be seen to be designed for the smoother, more efficient management of capitalism and its profit machine. A prime example of this is the Labour Party’s post-war ‘show-pieces’, nationalisation (often mistaken for socialism), which has been of no tangible benefit to the working class, and the National Health Service which was, and still’ is, a shoddy, back-to-work service designed to keep workers in efficient order for the task of creating profits for their employers.

Well-meaning individuals often say that you can favour socialism in the long term but still campaign for reforms in the meantime. We say that this is merely putting off the day and channelling energies that could be usefully employed in bringing socialism nearer into activities whose results are uncertain and which anyway are more likely to help bolster capitalism than get rid of it. In any case it is not the function of a socialist organisation to campaign for reforms or seek support on the basis of reforms.

So far it has been comparatively easy for the dissatisfaction of workers to be channelled in a reformist rather than a socialist direction. What most people want is a quiet, secure life for themselves and their families, but capitalism does not allow them this. They are constantly denied it by wars, crises, job reorganisation, government economics, day-to-day violence and all the perpetual agitation and change of the dynamic competitive system that is capitalism. They react apathetically to all this because they are used to decisions being made for them, arbitrarily, by ‘higher authority’ and feel powerless to do anything themselves. They may take refuge in television, drugs, working for charities, feverish pursuit of ‘success’, and delude themselves and others into thinking they are ‘happy’ in this. Yet things will not get better and, ultimately, they will have to tackle the problem at its source and take collective action to establish socialism.

What makes us think they will ever do this? Well there is certainly no guarantee, but certain long-term trends in capitalism do make it increasingly likely. Capitalism has already created a large, organised, highly trained working class which carries out by itself all essential productive, administrative and educative activity throughout the world and which is inexorably driven because of its subordinate social position and its conditions of work, to challenge the status quo. Capitalism has also produced, and carries on producing, the material conditions necessary for the establishment and the practical organisation of a united world-wide society rapid world-wide communications and a potential abundance of goods and services. Furthermore many of the problems of modern capitalism (pollution, threat of nuclear war, terrorism) are world problems which can only be approached on a world scale and which therefore spread among workers a consciousness of the need for global solutions.

Because socialism will be a fully democratic society in which the majority will get its way, with full rights of dissent for minorities, it follows that it can only be set up democratically. That is to say socialism cannot be handed to a majority of people by an elite which thinks it knows what is good for them. The result of minority revolution could only be minority rule under capitalism as in Russia, China and so on. And being a majority concept socialism excludes the idea of violence. The street fights and barricades vision of revolution so typical of today’s romantic Left is pure nineteenth-century. Today no barricades could possibly stand up to the might of the modern state and, in any case, there is no need, for in the economically advanced countries of the world, where workers are most numerous and highly trained, capitalism has been forced to give them certain elementary political rights, in particular the vote. So when a majority decide they want socialism they can organise themselves as a leaderless democratic political party (just as socialists at present have organised themselves in The Socialist Party) and use the ballot box to send their delegates to parliament with a mandate for abolishing capitalism and establishing socialism.

Sceptics often ask: ‘Will the capitalist class allow this to happen?’ Our reply is: ‘What can they do against a politically conscious majority from all sections (police, army included) of the working class?

What will socialism be like once established? Well we obviously cannot provide a blueprint as the precise details of its organisation will be democratically decided by the majority who in the future will establish that society and live in it. But we can make certain general statements about its nature.