The Principles of The Socialist Party. - Part 4 (1927)

From the February 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 3

Part IV

Beneath the workers there lies no further class. Neither from above nor from below can we look for assistance in the hour of social revolution. Labour is the most fundamental of social functions; consequently, the emancipation of the labourers will free every social function from the character of prostitution which clings to it under the regime of Capital.

Science and art to-day are the hired mistresses of Capitalist interests. Adulteration and advertisement of articles of sale, these are their most obvious functions. The elaboration of instruments of murder and plunder, and the idealisation of such processes on a national scale, are others.

With the freeing of the workers, science and art will acquire new meanings; they will become vested with a social purpose. Knowledge and beauty will be embodied in the actual material environment as well as the brains and bodies of mankind.

Women will no longer be under the necessity of providing heirs for property nor embryo hirelings for the labour market. Secure in a social heritage they will no longer need to offer their sexual attractions in return for the means of subsistence. Common property in the means of production will involve, therefore, the disappearance of both vice and virtue, dull respectability and its garish complement, monogamy and prostitution.

Thus every human being from birth onward will acquire a new social status. His or her own development will provide the basis for the maximum degree of social efficiency. The interests of society and individual are only antagonistic under a system based upon private property. Consequently the ethical conflict which forms the basis of moral codes will likewise disappear. Where the interests of each and all. are identical, abstract moralising will be simply so much waste of time. The object of existence will be to be happy, the place to be happy will be here, and the means of happiness will be to hand for all. Hence none will need to seek in the realm of shades for the forces with which to guide their lives. A life hereafter will no longer offer consolation for non-existent misery; while ghosts and gods will become as meaningless as fairies and hobgoblins. A rational outlook will accompany a rationally-ordered social life.

There remains to be considered the central power of the Capitalist, i.e., the State; its seizure by a revolutionary working-class cannot fail to alter its entire character. From an instrument for maintaining private property it will become the agent of its abolition. Wrenched from the control of their present masters, the armed forces will be reserved only so long as any danger of counter-revolution remains. As the reorganisation of society proceeds, the need for repression of anti-social elements, the relics of the dying order, will gradually disappear. The political character of society, that is, its organisation for the purpose of government, will give way to economic functions. The administration of things in the interests of all will render unnecessary the constant supervision of personal relations by the public power. Once these personal relations lose their pecuniary basis and become purely voluntary, their arbitrary regulation by an outside force becomes absurd. Hence it is clear that the entire organisation of society as we know it to-day will be sprung into the air with the uprising of the working-class. What will take its place we can only express in the most general terms. The mission of the workers is to destroy the existing obstacles to their own development. For that purpose we call upon them to organise into a political party in opposition to all forces assisting to maintain the present social order.

Eric Boden

THE END.