Socialism is vital (1979)

Editorial from the July 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists will not be waiting with bated breath to see how the new Conservative government shapes up. We will not be losing any sleep wondering whether they will increase — or reduce — taxes and state spending, or whether they will clamp down on law-breakers; or whether they will in the end so arrange the affairs of British capitalism that the great, conquering days of the British Empire return and the very name of Thatcher sends a chill down the spines of her enemies.

Such matters, which are an outsize preoccupation to anyone who supports the capitalist social system, are of supreme indifference to socialists. This is not because we try to cut ourselves off from the everyday problems of capitalism. The reason is that we judge such issues on the single ground of working class interests and how they are affected.

Elsewhere in this issue of the Socialist Standard, we deal in some detail with the prospects for this new government, and show how the working class can expect the same treatment as they got from Labour. They can expect to have to resist pressure to reduce their living standard, an attack on the bargaining power of the unions, a continuance of the propaganda aimed at convincing them that capitalism is the most efficient, benevolent and enduring society in the history of the human race.

No Basic Difference

The manifestos of the parties of capitalism during the last election showed clearly that there are no basic differences between them. This is due to the fact that they all stand for capitalism, although they might at times give their policy some other name. Yet after we have experienced them in power, the fact is that capitalism endures as before. Whatever their minor disagreements, they are all at one in their determination that that shall always be so.

This is predictable, since all of the other parties campaign for votes to keep capitalism in existance. They tell the working class that capitalism is essential and that it needs only a few minor changes — a readjustment here, a patching-up there — to make it work in the interests of the majority of its people. At times, their speech writers become positively entranced with their own spurious vision of what life will be like under this mythical version of a social system which has never brought anything other than misery and degradation to most people.

This propaganda is attractive enough to the voters for them to support capitalism in their millions; they are content to keep chasing the dream rather than face reality. And part of that reality is the fact that the arguments between the Labour and Conservative Parties are over trivial reforms or rather attempts at reform in many cases — of capitalism. Such differences are not worth voting about, and now that the workers have chosen to have the Tory version of capitalism instead of the Labour variety, the outcome of it is not worth concerning ourselves with.

Capitalism will always bring problems to the working class. Although the other parties claim to be able to do something about them, experience tells us that these problems are insoluble within capitalism. We live in a social system which is based on the class ownership of the means of wealth, production and distribution. One effect of this is that the wealth we turn out is made, not to satisfy human needs, but to serve the interests of the class who own the means of production.

The interests of that class are in the production of wealth to be sold so as to yield them profit with which their capital can be developed and expanded, and so buttress their privileged position in society. This process takes place through the exploitation of the other class — the working class, who do not own the means of production and who have to sell their labour power in order to live.

The lot of this class is one of exploitation and poverty. Whatever the wealth they consume — whether they move around on buses or drive a car, whether they wash their clothes in a tub or a washing machine, whether they read books during their time off or gaze at a television set — it is always restricted to what they can afford from their wage. And it is always inferior, sub-standard, made so that it comes within the purchasing power of a wage packet.

This is what is meant by working class poverty. At no time under capitalism will the working class have the freedom to enjoy the best that society can produce, and have unrestricted access to it. Yet without that freedom, they must always be said to be living in poverty.

This poverty manifests itself in several ways, many of them the subject of attempts at reform, and therefore the substance of the election programmes of the capitalist parties. Housing, for example, is a continuing sore which the parties of capitalism cynically aggravate in their drive to pick up votes. Yet inadequate housing afflicts only those who can afford nothing better; it is not a problem experienced by the capitalist class.

Denied Access

Medical and social services are also restricted when they are applied to the working class (not that the capitalist class need the attentions of social services; they have their own ready-made version). But the point is that the workers must always rely on the less-than-best, and very often the downright shoddy. Yet they are the class which produce all the world’s wealth; they make the very objects and services to which they are denied access.

The outcome of all this is disillusionment and despair. At one election after another, the working class turn to various parties in blind faith that their promises mean something and that somehow capitalism can be made to work in their interests. When these hopes are shattered, there is often a deeper disillusionment, with democracy itself or with the principle of political action to change society.

Socialism, in contrast, is the idea of hope. Socialists do not offer themselves as leaders, putting forward a better version of the same old discredited policies. Our case is that the working class can get rid of their problems; to do this they have to abolish capitalism and replace it with a society based on the common ownership of the means of production and distribution. We go further, and say that the working class can and must do this for themselves; no leaders can drag them by the nose into the new society.

Until that is a reality, socialists have no interest in the drab machinations of capitalist politics, except to offer them unremitting hostility and to expose them for the sham they are.