A correspondent in Northern Ireland has sent us the Constitution and Rules of an organisation calling itself the "Northern Ireland Socialist Party," and affiliated with the Labour Party.
The Constitution is a mixture of the Constitutions of the Independent Labour Party (up to 1931) and of the Labour Party. It contains, therefore, the usual large and small inaccuracies and unsound notions cherished by those parties.
For example, the object consists of the meaningless phrase that Socialism "is that state of society in which land and capital are communally owned, and the processes of production, distribution and exchange are social functions.”
Even Mr. Maxton had to confess when his attention was drawn to it, that "capital” by its nature cannot be communally owned. Capital is not merely machines and other instruments of production; it is those things in a particular social relationship—the capitalist form of private ownership. When the means of production become the property of society as a whole, they will cease to be means of providing profit for private owners; they will no longer be capital.
Similarly, it is absurd to talk about ”exchange” under Socialism. Exchange only has a place when goods are privately owned. Under Socialism goods will be produced and distributed. There will be no process of exchange.
Again, the Constitution states that the basis of Socialism will be "the organisation of the wage and salary earners.” Actually Socialism involves the abolition of the system of wage-labour altogether. There will be no capitalist class and no working class, and, therefore, no wage and salary earners.
This so-called Socialist Party is merely another attempt to build up in Northern Ireland one of the vote-catching, reformist organisations with which we are familiar in Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, and elsewhere.
It is not a Socialist Party in anything but name, and is not deserving of working-class support.
P. S.
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