Socialist Sonnet No. 138: Barbarism or Socialism? (2024)

From the Socialism or Your Money Back blog

Barbarism or Socialism?

A hundred, more, gangs on Haiti shows,

Under idyllic Caribbean skies,

The true nature of raw free enterprise

Untroubled by any effective laws.

Wherever the market determines goods,

Drugs or guns or both? And then nothing stirs

Unless so willed by armed entrepreneurs

The poor look up to as their Robin Hoods.

While terror roams the streets in four by fours

The limits of government are revealed,

The power of profit’s no longer concealed,

As the powerless huddle beyond their doors.

Barbarism or Socialism? The voice

Of Red Rosa echoes still with that choice.

 D. A.

Letter: Capitalism’s limits? (2010)

Letter to the Editors from the December 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors

Capitalism is reaching its expansionary limits and being driven by these limits to substitute saturation for expansion. It is turning inward and “eating out its own guts”. The result is “barbarism”. 

“Normal” capitalism generated profits through expansion (growth). Apart from some margin for maneuver in near-earth outer space, it no longer has room for profitable expansion. This drives the system to “expand” inward, deriving profits from forcing down production costs by cutting wages, forcing more family members onto the labour market, and imposing higher productivity levels on workers (intensified exploitation), thereby increasing the quantity of commodities but degrading their quality. Here again, force is an essential factor.

As Rosa Luxemburg wrote in The Accumulation of Capital in 1913, capitalism always needs an “outside” somewhere. Although material conditions have changed since Rosa’s time, this remains true in a “metaphorically substantive” sense. 

With capitalism expanded to its spatial limits and turned inward, exploitation and profits grow apace. The biosphere, however, is a fixed system of reproduction. It took “time out of mind” to generate the hydrocarbon fuels that production for profit has consumed in the course of less than 200 years. It is true that “biological resources, if rationally exploited, are renewable and therefore practically everlasting” (Standard, November 2010, p. 6). But globalised capitalism does not follow a rational logic and already has a toe in the waters of barbarism. Socialists must be the lifeguards on this shore: there is no alternative to socialism.

Joe R. Hopkins, 

Florida, USA.

Reply: 

As we pointed out in a reply to a letter in the September issue, Rosa Luxemburg’s book was based on a faulty analysis of capitalism even if its descriptive parts about the barbaric effect of the spread of capitalism are good. We don’t accept that capitalism does have any “spatial limit” – Editors.

Editorial: Why we need socialism (1990)

Editorial from the October 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

The case for socialism — a society of common ownership, democratic control, production for use and distribution according to need — rests on the fact that capitalism does not work, and cannot be made to work, in the interests of the majority in society who have to go out to work for a wage or salary.

Capitalism is a class-divided society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by a minority of extremely rich individuals. Goods and services, useful things, are produced not with the intention of satisfying our needs, but with the intention of making a profit for this minority. Production is subject to the profit motive. The economic law of "no profit, no production" rules.

Basically, capitalism can only work as a profit-making system in the interests of those who live off profits. It is because priority must be given to making profits that the needs of the wage and salary working majority are neglected. Profits come first. People's needs come second.

This is why the majority face problems even when it comes to meeting our basic needs. This is why there are problems over the quality of the food we eat. Why there are millions of people living in substandard housing, and why some are completely homeless. Why the health service is run on the cheap. Why there are problems over schools, transport, the environment — in fact why there are all the problems which the politicians promise to solve but never do.

Capitalism is not just a national phenomenon. It exists in all countries including, obviously now, in Russia. It is in fact a world system, and the problems of world poverty, ignorance and disease are to be laid at its door too. The productive forces exist to provide every man, woman and child on this planet with adequate food, clothing and shelter. Yet millions die each year of starvation or starvation-related diseases, while farmers in Europe and North America are paid not to grow food. These people die because they have no money and so don't constitute a market. Which means they don't count for the operation of the capitalist system.

Because capitalism involves a built-in competitive struggle for profits there is also a struggle that from time to time breaks out into actual warfare for sources of raw materials, for markets, for investment outlets and for strategic points and routes to protect these. To be prepared for this, and as a "deterrent" to other states to keep their distance, all of the states into which the world is divided have to maintain the most destructive weapons of war they can afford. So the world spends more on armaments than on dealing with problems like starvation and disease. So, also, the major powers have stockpiled enough nuclear weapons to destroy humanity many times over.

As if the threat of nuclear annihilation was not enough, there is also the threat of ecological disaster — either from global warming or from the hole in the ozone layer, take your pick — caused by industrial processes firms are forced to adopt to remain competitive and stay in the race for profits. So this is capitalism. And this is why we must get rid of it.

We must replace capitalism with socialism. A complete change in the basis of society, from class ownership and production for profit to common ownership and production just for use, must be brought about by conscious democratic political action before anything lasting or constructive can be done to solve existing problems. With common ownership and democratic control we will be freed from the tyranny of the economic laws of capitalism which restrict and distort what is produced to what is profitable. The barrier to us using the means of production to meet our needs will have gone.

The best of times, the worst of times (2023)

From the February 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

Perhaps it is the nature of ‘the news’ and its love of drama but most commentators seem to concur that we are living in the worst of times. The ‘obvious’ decline of this country parallels the disasters endured by many others of past and present. The anarchic reality of capitalism lies behind most of our contemporary problems but remains hidden beneath moral outrage and politically sectarian invective. There has never been a time when the NHS has not been in crisis and where a war has not raged somewhere on the planet; there has never been a time when a child is not dying for lack of clean water and an unpolluted environment; there has never been a time when the rich suffered and the poor did not – this is normal for all class-divided cultures. As the memories of an imaginary ‘golden age’ fade and are replaced by a shared sense of doom and despair for the future we might ask if our species has a predilection for self-destruction and somehow relishes the thought of disaster.

The Armageddon zeitgeist of popular culture has spawned numerous variations on how the world might end; from zombies and plagues to meteorite impacts and nuclear holocausts it’s hard to find an optimistic narrative when it comes to imagining humanity’s future. To some degree this reflects the failure of capitalism to deliver its promise of economic progress and security for all – the culture just seems to have run its course with nowhere else to go. After the Second World War there was an optimism that things would change and the baby-boomers of the 1960s were in the forefront of political activism that focused on reforming the economic system to bring some measure of equality and justice, at least in the West. Working-class culture blossomed with innovative forms of music, fashion, film and TV. This was all predicated on the belief that things would change for the better; when this proved to be an illusion and the forces of reaction were brought back to power as the result of reformist failure the road to disaster seemed almost inevitable. Thatcher and Reagan were symbols of this failure – theirs was the politics of atavistic hatred. The neo-con ideology took on the Orwellian role of turning facts into fiction and vice-versa. We still live with this legacy today only it has accelerated and evolved into the monster of ‘fake news’ fuelled by the global internet.

Propaganda has always taken advantage of whatever media are available. The Nazis were one of the first groups to see the potential of the mass media of radio and film – we still look back on Goebbels as the paradigm of propagandists. He would have adored the opportunities afforded by the internet. Unfortunately the online producers of ‘news’ are as in love with dramatic headlines as are the pulp mainstream media – of course many of them are sponsored and produced by the very same people. However if you have the patience you can find authentic voices of dissent who can provide a very different perspective. The world has become a smaller place where the suffering and conflicts everywhere are accessible in your home which only adds to the sense of unease and foreboding created by the tension of events in our everyday lives. Some embrace the cynicism of not believing in anything whilst others are caught up in the shifting sands of the impotent and meaningless debates between Left and Right. All too often these online arguments end up being merely egotistical slanging matches that produce much heat without any light. Is the internet just the latest example of a medium being used as a vehicle for ideological propaganda or has its very quantity of information changed its quality? Instead of relying on your favourite newspaper columnist or TV news show you have to make an effort to research alternative voices if your opinion is to have any value. The cultural zeitgeist has become irrevocably international.

The voice of doom has become universal and resonates in every corner of the globe. Betrayed hopes fuel the never-ending discovery of new reasons and causes of a seemingly inevitable end for our species. Will the children of today look back on their childhood fondly as a ‘golden age’ as many of the older generation do? Socialists have optimism built into their DNA but even we struggle to find an upbeat answer to Rosa Luxemburg’s question: ‘Is it to be socialism or barbarism?’ Of course it hasn’t come to that yet but we fear that time is running out. Many people in the past also felt an impending sense that ‘the end is nigh’ but this was based on the assumption that the battle between good and evil would be resolved one way or another. But instead of the dramatic human finale of Armageddon predicted by so many our species might just fade into oblivion within a sea of political cynicism and apathy leaving the rich to count their ever increasing wealth until one day they find they have nothing to buy with it.

The Dickens quote, part of which heads this article, seems to describe my life and times (born in the mid 1950s) as I suspect it would for many of my generation and is worth repeating in full:

‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair’ (A Tale of Two Cities).

Wez.

The plain case for Socialism. (1928)

From the September 1928 issue of the Socialist Standard

THE WORKERS CONDITIONS TO-DAY.

“Eight Million People on Poverty Line”—so runs the headline of a column in the Daily News for July 12th. An unemployed army that is steadily growing and is now nearly a million and a half; a coal-mining industry that is declining and turning its workers out to starve; a railway industry that is alleged to be on the down grade and has drawn from the Rt. Hon. J. H. Thomas the remark :

The railway situation to-day is worse than ever it was before, and I am gravely apprehensive about it. (Daily News, 2/7/28.)

Which remarks he backed up by recommending the railway workers to accept a 2½ per cent. reduction off their wages.

Ten thousand harvesters required for Canada (sixteen hours a day of real hard work) and tens of thousands apply for the jobs—some walking hundreds of miles, some getting out of sick beds, old men weakly pretending they are young, weaklings laying claim to lustihood, and all just for the chance of bread and butter.

But, we are told, we can’t do without capital, and evils such as these are necessary in order that society shall continue to “progress.”

THE EMPLOYERS’ “SOLUTION.”

How the capitalist looks at the situation is suggested by the remarks of Mr. William Wallace, at the Conference of Quaker Employers last April, where he said :

Capital should have a minimum wage, and in addition, a premium for the risk run. The worker should have a statutory minimum wage and the management a sufficient remuneration to secure the kind of management required. The surplus should then be used, firstly, to raise the minimum wage to the human needs basis, and, after that, it might be desirable to go on to profit-sharing or other means of distribution, such as pensions, superannuation, etc. (Italics ours)—Daily News, 14/4/28.

It will be seen that in the eyes of the Quaker the first essential is an adequate return for capital. He is willing to allow, as a secondary question, a minimum wage to the workers—but less than required to meet human needs. If, however, there is any surplus he is agreeable that a portion of it shall be used to raise the minimum wage to meet human needs !

If we take the above as a representative example of the Capitalist outlook (and remember the Quaker has a name as a “good” employer !) then all the bulk of the workers can hope for when in work is a wage less than what will meet human needs. As employment is a fluctuating quantity and the machine steadily encroaches upon the available jobs, each worker risks increasing periods of unemployment. How is he to get over these periods with no chance of savings to fall back upon? The answer, of course, is semi-starvation on the dole—for those that can qualify !

WHAT CAPITALISM HAS DONE FOR YOU.

In the days when human society was young no such troubles beset the people— starvation through unemployment was not known. It is a product of Capitalism and Capitalism cannot cure the disease without risking its continued existence. There is really only one cure and that cure involves the extinction of capitalism as such, for it strikes at the root of both unemployment and capitalism—the private ownership of the means of production.

The solution to the unemployment problem is so simple that once grasped it seems extraordinary that one has not seen it before. At the outset one may ask, “How can people be workless when the earth abounds in fruitfulness and there are hungry mouths to fill”? Surely the situation is ridiculous and forces one to see that there must be something fundamentally wrong with the method of production and distribution that is now in use. No amount of deep economic argument or highflown philosophical phrases can get over or explain away facts so simple as this.

If the bulk of a nation must endure poverty and know little of the pleasures of life in order that “Science, progress and Capitalism” shall flourish, then surely the sufferers must, sometime, put the question, “Why not shatter the whole thing to bits and relapse into barbarism” where conditions of this kind were unknown. The essence of the argument in favour of carrying on as at present simply signifies the providing of leisure, enjoyment, “progress” and the rest for a privileged few at the expense of the many.

WHAT IS THE PRESENT SYSTEM?

Fortunately, however, there is no need either to shatter society to bits, or to relapse into barbarism, in order to remove the evils that exist.

The hungry man looks into the baker’s shop but durst not take his fill.—Why? Because somebody else owns the goods. The unemployed man looks wistfully through the window at the whirring machinery, but durst not take his place at a machine.—Why? Because somebody else owns the factory and all that is in it. This brings us down at once to the root of the problem.

Taking the whole of society broadly, in almost every country the situation is as follows : The great bulk of the wealth in existence is produced by working people receiving wages in return for the energies they expend. This wealth and the workshops, raw material, and land involved in its production, are owned by vast companies representing’ mainly a relatively small group of shareholders who do not obtain their living by working, but live on the dividends they get from the companies. These companies naturally aim at providing as much dividends as possible and to this end only keep their factories running as fully and as long as profit (in the long run, of course) comes to them. They, therefore, take advantage of the aid of science in the way of providing machinery and organisation that reduces the staff that need be employed for producing a given quantity of goods. The net result is a steady decrease in the relative number of work people employed and consequent increase of unemployment.

ECONOMIC EVOLUTION.

Hundreds of years ago slavery came into existence because man’s power to produce reached a point where one man was able to produce in a day of labour a quantity of goods (or services) greater in value than what was needed to keep him for the day— he produced more than his keep. At that time this robbery was plain for every eye to see because the oppression was direct and open. In later times, for instance in Rome at the time of its imperial greatness, it was plain that the vast mass of slaves produced, not only all that kept them, but also a huge extra quantity that enabled the Patrician slave-holders to live luxuriously and distribute gratuitous feasts for the angry but poor freemen when they became restive. Since those days the means to produce a given quantity of goods with a less and less expenditure of human energy have made mighty strides, until we have reached a time when millions can be kept well nourished for employment in the work of destroying wealth, in a quantity and at a rapidity that is astounding-—as in the war that finished, ten years ago. Just pause for a moment and ponder over the fact that every single shell that burst over any front represented in value hundreds of square meals. Multiply the number that burst by the value of the guns, the equiping of the armies, and the value of the fortifications, buildings and the like destroyed and you will get some vague idea what present society, with its crippling methods of wasteful production, can afford to waste in the matter of wealth and still live. During the last month armies of soldiers, fleets of warships, and armies of aeroplanes have been engaged in costly manoeuvres—all waste of wealth and human energy. Ponder a little more and you will realise how easy it would be to fill every empty stomach, clothe every ragged body and house every starveling, if all the energy employed wastefully were spent on work connected with the production of what is necessary to meet the needs of all. Socialism implies this.

Gilmac.

(To be continued).

From Peons to Ions? (1955)

From the July 1955 issue of the Socialist Standard

Since the Party’s inauguration over half a century ago it has untiringly persevered with its case for Socialism, by the printed word, the street corner speakers, the platforms in public places—wherever the workers could be attracted, calling upon the world working class to end its problems of poverty, insecurity and mass slaughter.

The Party’s irrefutable case, built on the materialist conception of history, has analysed the capitalist system with all its contradictions and shown the synthesis of this outmoded economic system, which is the only inevitable road humanity can eventually take—in a word— SOCIALISM.

Only the world’s working class can establish this and ensure for the generations of the future the fuller, happier existence which is their natural goal. So far, sufficient numbers of the working class have not united for this common purpose. Nevertheless as it becomes more and more clear that capitalism has outlived its usefulness in social evolution, there accompanies it the hope that the workers will decide to speed the progress by understanding, desiring and determining to establish a Socialist society.

Now for many, possibly the majority, the sands could be running out. The choice and ability of changing society may not continue in its role of a latent probability in the good time of the working class. Today humanity is fast coming face to face with an ultimatum—one which may be utter and final—the fact of thermo-nuclear fission. The choice is becoming oppressive, the decision vital; be politically active or become radio-active. Change the social system of monopoly and privilege for the few, and the defence of these by the victims of the many or become radio-active vapour dominated by the capricious winds.

It is preferable to be integrated in a carefree world of humans, than disintegrated in universal infinitude as radio-active ions. The choice is the prerogative of the working class—socialise or ironize!

C. G. C.

Editorial: The Latest Humbug. (1920)

Editorial from the December 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is, perhaps, no other epoch in history so mean and brutal as the present. Even the days we are wont to call the "Dark Ages" have no records of men slaughtered wholesale by gas and flame. Herod has been out-Heroded by dozens of petty military chiefs. Nero earned the execration of posterity by burning a city: a modern general will gain a title and the popular applause by burning a score.

Where in the pages of history can one read of such detestable hypocrisy as the burial of the "Unknown Soldier" that took place a short time ago in the very street where the erstwhile comrades of that lifeless clay had been batoned because they dared to rebel against the prospect of starvation? Does any thinking man suggest that the capitalist class had any other idea, in organising and carrying out, with such pomp and expense, the burial of a common soldier, than hoodwinking the working class ?

Standing at the Cenotaph in "silent humility" at 11 o'clock on the Anniversary of Armistice Day were to be seen politicians whose whole political career is a record of pompous and contemptuous disregard for the lives of the working class; who had sent soldiers to shoot down strikers in their native streets, and who at that very moment were formulating plans for the calling together of scientists to assure that this country should be well supplied with poison gas at the outbreak of the next war!

Representations are being made to the Government to protect the infant dye industry against foreign competition—not because they want English frocks dyed with English dyes! That is (vide "Daily Mail," 19th Nov.) only, apparently, a secondary point. The main reason is that of the maintenance of plant for the manufacture of toxic gases! And this almost contemporary with the announcement that the League of Nations is endeavouring to prohibit the use of gas in war !

We were told at the commencement of the war that no more would be seen the spectacle of men broken in fighting "their country's battles" forced to seek charity in the streets or shelter in the workhouses. We were promised "a land fit for heroes." Our eyes were dazzled with the prospect of an England made beautiful and happy so soon as the Prussian were crushed and rendered innocuous. Yet what do we find ? Men wearing war ribbons hawking vegetables, or even begging coppers, may be met with all over the place. Certain newspapers are full of the plaints of ex-soldiers who have been swindled out of their pensions. One journalist has been going about the country as a tramp, and reports the casual wards in all parts to be full of ex-service men tramping about the land looking for work! The economic position of nearly everyone who possesses nothing but labour power is more desperate than ever it was before ! And yet Prussianism is crushed. Its arch-exponent is reduced to the expedient of sawing wood as an outlet to his feelings !

Was it, then, Prussianism that was the enemy of the working class ? Or was not the Socialist right when he told you that the capitalist system was the enemy to be fought and crushed ? Do you still place reliance on your political representatives ? Show us a capitalist politician and we will show you a fraud, a trickster, and a pot-hunter. Show us a labour leader and we will point you either a stupid ignoramus or a wilful misleader. Show us an ideal you cherish and we will show you how the capitalist class through their Press twist it to their own advantage. Even your tears and heartaches for your lost young men are used by this hypocritical class to blind you to the rottenness of the system upon which they batten and live their luxurious lives.

How, then, to escape from this murderous, slavish existence ? Do we need tell you the way again ? Or need we only urge you.to think for yourselves ? If you need encouragement go to Bethnal Green, or to the slums of Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, or whatever great town you may be near, and if you have any pity in you it will not be long before you discover the way to end the system that murders and degrades the large mass of its community in the interests of a small section, and assuages its grief-stricken millions with a circus.

The Future: Socialism or Barbarism (2018)

From the August 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

Back in the glory days of the Blair administration, a soft-left journal like the New Statesman would have confined itself to articles on the Kremlinology of Whitehall: who was a Blairite? Who a Brownie? Perhaps the odd John Pilger article would crop up to deplore some aspects of foreign policy. Discussion of capitalism, much less socialism, would have been a rarity. Fast forward to today, and we have the political editor of that organ, George Eaton, discussing what the consequences of the end of capitalism might be 

Now, the Socialist Party has always been clear that capitalism won't end itself, and that only its conscious replacement by politically organised workers will achieve that. Something, though, is clearly in the air when post-capitalist ideas start to gain air-time. Part of that is the clear sense that technological change is transforming the way we work now.

Eaton notes the slew of books on the matter: Paul Mason's technology-driven book Post-Capitalism has been reviewed in the Socialist Standard, and it does indeed put technology front and centre of social change. Eaton also references a forthcoming book with the intriguing title Fully Automated Luxury Communism by Aaron Bastani (which we will no doubt be devouring as soon as it is out). Eaton, though, explores the possibility, despite the shiny stuff on offer, that the future might well be a choice between socialism or barbarism.

He cites Four Futures by Peter Frase, which outlines the possible effects of technological progress: ‘Communism’ (equality and abundance), ‘Rentism’ (hierarchy and abundance), ‘Socialism’ (equality and scarcity), ‘Exterminism’ (hierarchy and scarcity). All premised on the question of response and resolution to environmental catastrophe. We'll leave the small matter of our standing objection to the misuse of the word socialism hanging, and work within Frase's framework for now.

The futurist and science fiction author Charles Stross set out, in a blog post in 2017, how the exterminist option contains its own horrific and plausible logic:

   'Consider Bangladesh, and the Bay of Bengal fisheries collapse, not to mention the giant anoxic dead zone spreading in the Bay of Bengal (which means those fisheries won't be coming back for a very long time). There are nearly 170 million people there, mostly living on alluvial flood plains feeding into the gradually rising ocean. If the sea level rises by just one meter, 10% of the land area will be flooded; most of the country is less than 12m above sea level. It's a primarily agricultural economy (it's one of the main rice and wheat producing nations), heavily dependent on fisheries for protein to supplement the diet of its citizens' 

As he notes, one horrific option is to just contain the population of Bangladesh, and let catastrophe run in a Malthusian genocide that could be passed off as natural disaster. This is a repeatable option for an elite that can jet to their private fortress islands and escape. No need to adjust to climate change, the deaths of others will reduce the environmental impact of humanity.

This can only be made possible by technology creating a relative surplus population of people whose labour is no longer required for market production.

In the light of this, Eaton is entirely correct, technological change alone will not deliver us from capitalism; and he channels Marx in observing that 'Men and women will continue to make their own history – if not in circumstances of their choosing.' The human response to technological change is, though, at the heart of political battles for the foreseeable years to come, and if we are to make our history, it has to be in the conscious effort to choose what might be called 'fully automated luxury socialism.' The choice we will all face is how to use the time won by labour-saving technology. Not that we need a fully automated society to build a society where 'poverty may give place to comfort, privilege to equality, and slavery to freedom' but we do need to take control of the gains and benefits of labour saving technology.

Pik Smeet

Editorial: The Case for Sanity (1961)

Editorial from the October 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

We live in an insane world, one that becomes more and more insane with every day that passes.

To pick up a newspaper is to find a daily catalogue of wars and threats of wars, hatreds and atrocities, murder and violence. Over all lies the shadow of nuclear destruction.

In Berlin, the two big power groups face up to each other like squabbling children, each trying to shout “Yah” louder than its rival, each daring the other to strike the first blow. In the Congo, still rent with violence, that monument of ineptitude, the United Nations, decides to intervene and chooses to do so in a sordid scramble of colonialism mixed with petty economic rivalry, the whole sorry business made worse by the usual intrigues of the big capitalist powers.

Russia, after a short period of quiet, proceeds to explode nuclear devices at a frenzied rate, sending clouds of poison into the atmosphere to threaten the health of all the earth's inhabitants, and of even the unborn. The United States hardly waits to do the same, its rulers weeping crocodile tears the while. Between times they have both been spending astronomical sums in perfecting the ways of delivering their bombs. Huge crowds have been cheering the astronauts of both sides for their heroism, apparently oblivious that behind it all lies the terrible threat that missiles can now be directed with pin-point accuracy to annihilate places thousands of miles away.

There is uneasy peace in Tunisia, but in Algeria the dreadful carnage goes on. Laos has dropped out of the news as quickly as it came into it, but could just as easily erupt again. In South America, Brazil looked as though it might develop into another Cuba, but has not done so, at least for the moment. In East Africa, the Rhodesias, and South Africa, things remain only outwardly quiet. The fact is that we are hardly surprised any more at anything anywhere. Such is the terrible pass to which capitalism has brought humanity.

And yet, against this background of tragedy and folly, which might be expected to reduce us only to abandonment and despair, we record with pride that, far from being discouraged, the Socialist Party has not for many years been so active in its propaganda, nor its members so enthusiastic.

We have just come to the end of an excellent outdoor season, opening up several new areas and developing old ones. Audiences have been good and generally interested and receptive. Literature sales have been high. Even more encouraging are the preparations for the winter season, the indoor programmes of branches being more ambitious than ever as the meetings advertised in this issue will show.

Most encouraging of all in these days of alleged political apathy, when even the big guns of capitalist politics find it hard to hold a good meeting, is the fad that we have run two really successful indoor rallies.

The third of these is being held this month and we are confident that it will prove more successful than those previously, a fitting conclusion to the fine summer season and an auspicious opening to an even finer winter one.

In an insane world, the issue is more than ever—Capitalism or Socialism. Let us hold fast to sanity and demonstrate for Socialism!

No Half-Way House to Socialism. (1944)

From the July 1944 issue of the Socialist Standard

The war is still going strong, although we are informed by our musters’ press that this year may see the finish of the conflict in Europe.

The wage slave views the cessation of hostilities with some misgiving, especially if he was living on the dole when the struggle commenced. Many never knew what a steady job was, and some had never been employed in any capacity until the war came along.

The wage slave who starts life on the dole, and who, after experiencing the horrors of war, finds himself back on the dole, may view life somewhat differently to the worker who has been on the treadmill of regular employment: the former should provide material for a psychological study; he can’t function on the job or in a trade union, and the question is how will he react to the conditions that prevail in the aftermath of the war?

The answer is that he is likely to become the follower of some leader with large political aspirations. A Fascist Party is a political group with an army at its back: the conditions that brought a Mussolini and a Hitler into being may reappear in an intensified form if capitalism continues to function after the war: and the latter appears to be a safe bet.

Lewis H. Morgan stated that the economic development moves blindly, but social institutions are the product of thought. Cartels and combines are appearing in ever more gigantic forms; these easily leap over national barriers, and refuse to be held hack by out of date political parties. The capitalist class will continue to try and perpetuate those social and political features which promise to them the right to the appropriation of surplus value. As the interests of our masters are now definitely opposed to the interests of society as a whole, we are approaching a period when the class struggle will come into the open. There are indications of this in the ranks of those organisations that function as would-be reformers. These are being forced by moving circumstances to expose themselves as collaborators and defenders of capital. Look at the Labour Party, for instance, openly acting as overseers for the slave owners. The Communists also have ably seconded and supported these henchmen of the exploiter ever since Russia came into the war. Betrayed and bereft, the wage slave looks in vain for a way out, and as he sees no further than the horizon of the wages system, he can find none. He will, however, struggle to live, and be buffeted and knocked around more systematically than heretofore by the powers that be in his efforts to do so. Capitalism has no mercy on an unwanted slave.

The Labour Party leadership in the main consists of ambitions men who consider there is more to be gained by fooling the working class than by arousing them against the capitalist exploiter. Our masters describe them as safe and sane. If they are good they may receive titles, and it is to be noted that the higher they climb the more they function as the willing tools of those who are labour’s enemies. The strutting peacocks basking in the sunshine of ruling class smiles have long ago abandoned the idea of fighting for the emancipation of the class to which we belong, and we may expect nothing but the persistent attempt to rivet the chains of wage slavery perpetually to the limbs of the toilers. When these creatures speak of Socialism, their idea is capitalist nationalisation, which simply means state capitalism: the capitalist class pool their interests and use the public power of coercion to compel the slaves to work in accordance with capitalist requirements.

You can see what would happen by observing what is happening during the war: “You have been late for work on four occasions.” Fined £4.

The working class are, however, beginning to wake up, and the exploiters are getting worried, and when they do the labour leader has to do his stuff: when the worker is doaded beyond endurance and quits work, his trade union leader at the command of capital tries to drive him back: the rank and file are in increasing numbers losing confidence and turning against the co-operating officials. This is causing anxiety in capitalist circles.

The conditions prevailing after the war are likely to be chaotic, and the general confusion may be intensified by the bewildered state of the wage slaves’ mind. The acid test of destiny cannot but find all labour leaders wanting, the ground will give way under their feet, and we may expect them to come tumbling down from their pedestals, being unable to cope with or to understand the meaning of what is transpiring around them.

It is not theory but reality that is the test of truth. Confusion is becoming worse confounded as a result of changing names, whilst allowing the substance of things to remain the same. Public Assistance Boards are poor relief outfits, and Old Age Pensions amount to the same thing. The Labour Exchange is in reality the slave market. By giving things names that denote their real meaning we quicken the intelligence. of our class. We explain the situation as it really is and do not get entangled in ruling class verbiage. Our appeal is to the proletariat, the propertyless class; they understand us best when we express ourselves in terms similar to those they use when on the job. The be-all and end-all of propaganda is to translate into everyday wage slave language the economics of the present system and the necessity for Socialism.

The Socialist tries to get his non-Socialist workmates to perceive that until the means of wealth production are made common property and a system of production solely for use is established, their lot will be that of wage slaves, receiving in exchange for the use of their labour power food, clothing and shelter of a quality and quantity barely sufficient to regenerate in their bodies the energy that is taken out of them when on the jobs.

In other words, the body of the wage slave functions as a mechanism for producing energy for the ruling class to exploit. The labour power of the worker sells at the cost of its reproduction.

The source of all surplus value is living labour. The capitalist instinctively realises this: so does the politician and the priest. The worker is the goose that lays the golden eggs. As the wealth he produces is taken from him practically as fast as it is brought into being, he fails to grasp the facts underlying the real position. He knows his wages are nicely adjusted to what he can live and work upon, but he is fooled by the money trick into believing he is paid for his labour.

The capitalist class use the means of wealth production, the land, factories, railways, mines, etc. us a means of corraling the real thing—the slave.

The slave is the only form of property that brings to the owner a revenue—something for nothing. When the ruling class quarrel amongst themselves, the wage slaves are torn from productive industry and made to engage in war, the industry of destruction.

The workers in different camps are pitted against one another. They re-echo their masters’ slogans of democracy and liberty, but no matter what the result of the conflict may be, the rulers will never sacrifice their right to appropriate unto themselves all the worker produces over and above what is necessary to sustain him. What the capitalist means by liberty and democracy is the full and free opportunity to exploit labour for profit, and those who stand for less than the abolition of the wages system are on the side of labour’s enemies, though they may know it not.

The reforms of the reformers never deal with the source of the trouble: the wealth of the ruling class has not been made less as a result of the activities of those who believe in the inevitability of gradualness, neither has the relative position of master and slave changed. The wealth of the ruling class in normal times steadily increases, and that of the worker becomes relatively less.

Put not your trust in leaders! The Socialist calls upon the worker himself to put an end to the present deplorable state of things. Instead of relying upon others, he must tackle the job on his own. There is nothing to prevent the working class democratically getting hold of the political machinery through the vote. Against the united advance of the working class the capitalist class are absolutely helpless. The interests of the working class are identical on tho class field—the political field. The issue between the wage slaves and their masters is one of ownership.

Shall the means of life become common property, or shall they continue to remain the exclusive property of the master class.

When the change is effected that history decrees must be, mankind will open a new page in its development.

The coming of Socialism will lift human society to a higher plane than it has occupied heretofore: then and then only will man be free in the real sense of the term.

Until the means of life are made common property, no power ou earth can take labour power out of the category of commodities: there it is fixed by the economic laws of capitalism, and all the pious resolutions of the I.L.O. cannot alter that fundamental fact, therefore the worker must establish Socialism or perish in capitalist slavery. There is no half-way house.

Charles Lestor

Beyond the Profit System (1997)

From the June 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

The only way to stop capitalism plunging the world even deeper into the mire is for the working class to look beyond the confines of the profit system .

All systems of private property society pass through periods of ascendancy or progression and then through a period of decadence when they have outlived their usefulness. Socialists contend that having created the material conditions for its replacement by socialism—a society of free access to abundant and available wealth—capitalism is now a politically decadent social system. Given the level of productive potential in society, it is now obsolete, being the real cause of poverty amid opulence, economic crises of overproduction for the market but not for need, and never-ending wars over economic and political power.

Indeed, its development is now such that having extended its tentacles into every aspect of human existence, the market economy is eating away at the very fabric of collective life, extolling the virtues of competition, aggression and an ‘every man for himself’ culture the like of which has never been experienced before. This has resulted in massive waves of crime, drug abuse, corruption, violence and spreading ideological poisons like religious fundamentalism and ethnic cleansing. Even in the so-called “democratic” and “advanced” heartlands of world capitalism, the market economy is exhibiting real signs of what can be termed social decadence as well as political obsolescence. As capitalist society appears to rot on its feet under the pressure of its own competitive economic momentum, the very gains of centuries of civilisation are put into question. The onset of this period of social decadence has been the product of the working class’s inability to put an end to capitalism—it has certainly not been inevitable, any more so than periods of social decadence in earlier systems of society were.

Economic decadence?

As well as the type of social decadence that now characterises world capitalism, other private property systems have gone through a period of pure economic decadence too. This occurs when the pace of growth of the productive forces slackens and then finally comes to a halt; in other words, when the limits to growth of an economic arrangement in society have been reached and a social system can develop the forces of production no more.

The notion of economic decadence or limits to growth has led many theorists astray—including some allegedly in the Marxist tradition. No system of society ever collapses like a pack of cards, and the predictions of those like the old Communist Party and ILP who thought it would were dashed time after time. Likewise today, Trotskyist and Left Communist groups who have long given up any hope of a majority working class revolution dream up fantasies of capitalism collapsing, with the vanguard of the working class rising like a phoenix out of the flames to build a new society on the ashes of the old.

Notwithstanding such infantile fantasies, it is certainly true to say that all societies have had economic limits beyond which they have been unable to progress and that this situation has generally been reached when the way in which society is organised has become a pure economic fetter on the forces of production. This factor undoubtedly influenced the decline and eventual supersession of previous societies like Ancient Rome and feudalism. These systems did not collapse but stagnated until the forces capable of sweeping them away were able to do so. In the example of feudalism, that system was not superseded by capitalism until the new productive methods and organisation of the capitalist class were consolidated, heralding an era of unprecedented economic growth based on industrialisation and the wage labour/capital relationship that went with it, a relationship which succeeded in sweeping away the stagnant and inefficient old feudal lord/peasantry ties.

Capitalism has been the most dynamic social system in the history of humankind and if limits to capitalist growth are ever reached it will be because the working class has been unable to replace the global market economy with world-wide common ownership and production for use. Capitalism will not collapse, it will simply reach a point whereby eventually it cannot expand the productive forces any further. Given the internal dynamic of capitalism there can only be one cause of this should it ever be reached—a halt to growth will occur only if there is no longer a sufficient mass of the system’s lifeblood, profit. In turn this situation is only likely to come about as a product of technological progress and all it brings with it in terms of developing the productive potential of society.

Capitalism has developed production over the last two centuries and more through the extraction and expansion of profit. The sole source of profit in capitalism is, of course, human labour but no matter how much the intensity of exploitation is increased so that more unpaid labour is given, there has to reach a point where, because of continuing automation and replacement of labour in the production process, this can no longer be sufficient to ensure a growth in total value production, of socially necessary labour inputs.The volume of unpaid labour turned into surplus value would no longer be able to rise sporadically as at present, but would halt and even start falling if the process was carried far enough. As a result, the mass of profit available for reinvestment in production would halt and eventually enter into a downward long-term spiral rather than an upward one. Such a development would have serious consequences for all those components of the market which are particularly dependent on capitalist economic growth—state finance and welfare provision, rises in wages, maintenance of social cohesion and environmental conditions to name but the most obvious. It would be a much more serious and damaging set of circumstances than the current difficulties associated with the current squeeze on the rate and mass of profit after tax—similar in consequence but more devastating in impact.

Pure economic decadence and its attendant limits to capitalist growth may be a situation that is never reached. If capitalism goes on long enough, though, it is a definite possibility, even a likelihood. Just as the onset of political decadence was followed eventually by the development of social decadence, so— eventually—economic decadence could follow unless something is done.

Time for action

Anyone with money enough to travel will know that there are still pockets of calm here and there on this planet, but what is becoming increasingly difficult to deny is that the world is a mess and is becoming a bigger and more horrible mess as the days, months and years go by. Many shut their eyes to it, but quite how long they will be able to carry on doing so is only a matter for speculation. Large tracts of Planet Earth are a stinking hole and the stench is wafting in all our directions.

Among the bourgeois commentators still broadly supporting capitalism, more and more demonstrate a distaste for its effects. Typical, in BBC Radio 4's 1996 Analysis Lecture was Professor Paul Kennedy. In his talk to various diplomats, politicians and business leaders he commented on the dangers global capitalism is already bringing with it. He asked his audience whether there was a solution to the disturbing trends encouraged by the spread of the world market and its prevailing competitive ethos, putting his own views in the following words:

“Perhaps in fact there is no answer and we simply have to brace ourselves for what [the economist] Schumpeter termed the "creative gales' of capitalism. Or perhaps Marx, lying in his grave and at present almost universally scorned, has a slow smile creeping across his face as he sees the convulsions ahead. That would be the final, and greatest, irony of this twentieth century of ours.”

Karl Marx, whose works were variously distorted by so many of those who claimed to be his supporters and ridiculed by his opponents, may indeed have the last laugh. Though only human and therefore fallible, Marx’s analysis of society has in many respects been proven remarkably accurate save for one thing—admittedly the most important—his prediction of socialism.

As capitalism heads deeper into its senility, manifesting new signs of its obsolescence by the day, it is up to the world-wide working class of wage and salary earners to fulfil Marx’s last hope, though not for his sake—for our own. Sooner or later; socialism, a system of common ownership, democratic control and production solely for use will have to figure on the agenda of the working class if humankind’s collective existence and very survival is not to be put at stake. It is to facilitate that process that the Socialist Party of Great Britain and our companion parties in the World Socialist Movement exist and it is why this series of articles has been written. Our message to the working class is that capitalism’s time has gone. The choice before us is now “socialism or barbarism”, a progressive move to the next higher stage of social evolution, or a regression from which we may never recover. The choice is yours—but don’t spend a lifetime thinking about it.

Dave Perrin