Fraud or Fool? An Open Letter to the Bishop of London. (1909)

From the January 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

My Lord Bishop,—The Press reports you as saying recently, at a meeting convened by the State Children’s Association, that “Any boy now being taught in their Poor Law Institutions might sit on the throne of the Archbishop of Canterbury, if he had the brains and power.”

The most charitable construction that can be put upon this startling announcement is that you lack information, and since you are in a position which could readily enable you to obtain such information, you are a fool. As you should have learnt from one of your own textbooks, “A fool despises instruction.”

The inability to definitely posit you as fraud or fool by no means demonstrates that you are neither. In the hazy atmosphere compounded of episcopal mendacity and aristocratic thickheadedness which represents your mental equipment, your public utterances loom up tinged with varying proportions of the murky ingredients which gave them being.

The moral kink treads hard upon the intellectual twist. Folly and Falsehood were ever twin monsters of one brood.

I will not press you to give your definition of the word “power.” The habit you have fallen into of using sounding phrases which may haply disguise insincerity of heart, and clearness of mind, precludes you from giving precision to terms which cry aloud for such treatment at your mouth—”blind mouth,” Milton would have said. Your formal adherence to creeds and doctrines which you dare not examine, your futile juggling with the metaphysical niceties of an outworn creed, your £10,000 a year, are a bar, an ever increasing barrier, between yourself and intellectual candour.

What of your Ordination Oath, when one of your own clergy brazenly proclaims the prostitution of his office and of his intellect ”in his own pulpit at St. Margaret’s Church,” by declaring he mouths “formularies to which, as an individual, he cannot ex animo subscribe” ?

“Power”! Your statement with regard to the word in question simply means that “Any boy now being taught in their Poor Law Institutions might sit on the throne of the Archbishop of Canterbury if he could manage to do the trick.” “Any boy can punch his neighbour in the eye if he can.” “What will happen will happen.” 0=0. Startling conclusion ! Cerebation extraordinary—which brings me to the question of

BRAINS.

I understand from your utterance that you hold intellect to be one of the main necessities for success in life. That is a fair inference from your statement. You give adhesion to the taradiddle which declares to the French youth that every private carries in his knapsack the baton of a marshall ; you hold that the humblest clerk in the Admiralty, by strict attention to duty, may one day “become a ruler of the King’s navee”—inferentially that your exalted position is owing partly to an extra dose of grey matter.

A bitter fool !

I wonder what the assembled company in Park Lane thought. Did none wince at that nonsensical nullity of yours concerning “power”? I know naught of Lady Buxton, eke of Lady Courtney, but Mrs. Barnett ? The good lady who so severely takes the servant girl to task for her lack of coherent thinking, who has deplored the lack of “light” among the class which she vainly endeavours to sugar ! And the “secondary and elementary school teachers” present ! Peradventure, the secondaries and elementaries were at Park Lane on strict business bent. “Les affaires sont les affaires, n’est’ce pas.” If the question is not personal, did the presence of those same purveyors of specially doctored capitalist lore afflict you with a sort of sympathetic itching ? On the grounds of a common humanity, sharply and inevitably opposed as you and I must be, my Lord Bishop, on the political field, I sympathise with you for any discomfort you may have felt in the direction indicated. The creepiness of the “secondary” and “elementary” is of so loathsome a nature that a bishop should be spared that infliction.

Perhaps a quotation from Ruskin may help you to grasp my view-point on the question of Success and Brains. The Socialist Party of Great Britain does not swear by Ruskin. It occasionally, perforce, swears at him. But, at any rate, he did see certain isolated facts clearly, if he failed to correlate them, and made a kaleidoscopic colour smudge of what was intended to be an ordered harmony. “In a community regulated only by laws of supply and demand” successful persons are “industrious, resolute, proud, covetous, prompt, methodical, unimaginative, and ignorant.” Not much room for brains here. Per contra, “the persons who remain poor are the entirely foolish, the entirely wise, the entirely merciful, just and godly person.” Eh ! Ruskin wasn’t orthodox ? You repudiate him as witness ? My Lord of London, Right Reverend Father in God, bland participator in the profits distilled from the life’s blood of the workingman, reeking with the shame of the unsexed working woman, bloody with the agony-drops of children,—will ye accept the ruling of the phantom figure which you and yours have exploited in your own interest for so long, and whom you have solemnly declared to represent the highest attainable wisdom ? You are never tired of telling us the “His Life” was the highest teaching, irrespective of precept. So. And yet your Incarnation of Highest Truth, your Very-God-of-Very-God-Man made a sorry hash of his life, reproaching the Unbegotten-Very-God-of-Very-God in his dying agony. I beg pardon. You say, ha ! He attained the highest success. M’yes, but that was not the kind of success you contemplated when beaming on the Park Lane assembly. The archbishop’s throne, the bishop’s chair, have not, of recent years, been associated with martyrdom. What you indicated was, that the poor little worker’s kiddy stood an excellent chance of collaring the £15,000 a year attached to the “throne” of Augustine’s successor.

A word in conclusion. Your cant and rant have no longer much weight with the class that has worked religion for all it is worth, in the only way that it could be worked, viz., for the befooling and undoing of the worker. But you need not therefore despair. If your class has its philosophic doubters, its ethical philanders, its Cheynes and its Hensons, there are still the

PIOUS LABOUR LEADERS;

there are still the “Socialist” bleaters who find such solace in a quiet hour on their knees that they become permanently afflicted with housemaid’s knee on the brain, meek firebrands, valiant worms, revolutionary P.S.A’ers, to whom you may still address your pagan patter and mushy moralising. A tip, my Lord. Next time you address a gathering on a similar subject, why not invite a few of the meek-eyed crowd herein indicated ? That you may bore each other to mutual damnation is the final wish of

Yours,

SNOGGY

The Secret of Marx. (1908)

From the March 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

An Open Letter to the Author "The Secret of Herbart." 

Dear Dr. Hayward,

Your book, “The Secret of Herbart,” must impress everyone who reads it with the feeling that you are earnestly endeavouring to do something beyond what you are primarily expected to do by your employers, viz., apply the screw to the “captains and guides of the democracy” in order that they shall the better grind out of the school mill more efficient wage-slaves as exploitation material for the class which laughs up its sleeve at your misdirected efforts to bring about the millennium by Dickens-readings and the generous administration of chunks of “apperception” stuff. But at the same time we feel impelled to point out to you that your book is

AN UNCONSCIOUS FRAUD.

The “secret” which you set out to discover to a grateful public, and the knowledge of which shall add stature to those who are wallowing in your “professional gutter,” is so “portentous” that, at the finish, it whittles down to what looks uncommonly like an 80 pp. puff of books advertised on the cover. Where the “priceless biographies of the Bible,” let alone the lives of Curtius and Livingstone have failed, can your pinchbeck “hero of the situation” with his “Book of Moral Lessons” effect the desired alteration ?

But let us come to close grips. You aim at a better state of Society. Good. “Education” so far has failed. Granted, — from your point of view, and from ours too. But it has succeeded admirably in serving the purpose for which it was intended, and is intended, by the framers of “codes,” past and present. Have you read a soul-inspiring work, “German Schools,” by one of your late colleagues? In that mass of pseudo-scientific collation of facts, and of inane inconsequentialities, two observations stand out which typify the trend of thought of the average “educationist” who is hired by the capitalist class to help to bolster up a system which it is beginning to feel, in spite of its Caliban-like mental outlook, has already taken a decided cant in a direction which inspires him with deep misgivings.

The writer of the work in question notes with deep satisfaction that arithmetic is most successfully taught in Hamburg, and has no doubt that this is owing to the stress laid on the subject by the merchants of that city. What kind of a “circle of ideas” does the mind of

THIS VERY PETTY BOURGEOIS

run in? This man had “charge” of L.C.C. schools once, Doctor. He derived immense satisfaction on one occasion from the fact that poor little mites of seven to nine years old were somewhat hazy as to which was “subject” and which was “predicate” in the sentence “I saw a man running round a rock.” It evinced such high scholarship, such acuteness to discover that the infantile mind is unable to grapple with the niceties of a subject which may be safely ignored by the cultured man, and is the sheerest futility to “teach” to children.

The other observation is that with regard to the massing of children, and their devout rendering of a German national song. This picker-up of peddling trifles, whose whole vision seems obsessed by “average sums right,” “average mistakes,” waxes as eloquent as his very “practical” mind will allow him. He says :

“The commemorative gathering (Sedan-Day) was held in the large hall of the school. A long address was read, after which recitations alternated with songs of a patriotic kind. . . The impression made upon me was profound—a pious assembly met in a God-fearing way to celebrate their great triumph. With such a people it would be much to be friends, it would be disquieting to have them for enemies.”

You see the point ? Good arithmetic—better clerks ; patriotic ritual—obedient wage-slaves, quiet, docile animals who would not, could not, be guilty of lèse majesté, under no conditions whatever would read Marx and Engels, but who should thank God that they were only pelted with hard speeches instead of harder bullets, and should join their English fellow-workers in striving to order themselves lowly and reverently to all their betters.

This view, judging from your work “The Secret of Herbart,” is not satisfactory to you. I hope it is not too personal to observe that, in your official capacity, you must feel like the proverbial fish out of water. You are seeking to penetrate, not only the “impenetrable carapace” of the Blatchfordian gin-drinking wastrel, but incidentally the equally “impenetrable carapace” which officialdom invariably assumes. Has it ever struck you that possibly

BOTH ARE TWIN MONSTERS

born of the same hideous mother—foul, unholy capitalism. Has it ever occurred to you that the “circle of ideas” can only revolve in a

MATERIAL FRAMEWORK.

You occasionally glimpse the position. You say “Lust and brutality are generated as certainly as scrophula or typhus.” They are. Typhus and scrofula are the outcome of certain conditions. The merry typhus germ may career around for all time, as far as we know, without doing any damage until it finds suitable soil. Unhealthy surrounding are an absolute necessity for the fell work of the typhus germ,—the foetid atmosphere generated by capitalist society is peculiarly adapted for the growth of “lust and brutality.” Social relations determine the prevalence of typhus and scrofula,—no less do social relations determine the prevalence of “lust and brutality.” And here we come full on the

SECRET OF MARX,

beside which the alleged “Secret of Herbart” stands abashed. That secret is

“In every historical epoch, the prevailing mode of production and exchange, and the social organisation necessarily following from it, form the basis upon which is built up, and from which alone can be explained, the political and intellectual history of that epoch.”

The highest philanthropic and missionary work, you say, is that which seeks to “implant wholesome interests.” Allow me, my dear Doctor, to introduce you to the

SOCIALIST PARTY OF GREAT BRITAIN,

which is seeking to implant the most wholesome interest a worker can have, namely, interest in himself as a unit of a slave class, interest in seeking to learn the genesis of that class, interest in seeking methods to remove the cause of his slavery. Can you ask higher ? What greater service can you render to a slave than to make him feel his position keenly (to be “class-conscious”), to point out the origin of his enslavement, and to show him the only road to his salvation? If “apperception” be “the process of interpreting some new fact or experience by means of our previous knowledge” then the Socialist Party of Great Britain may lay claim to be the only true disciples of Herbart to-day. The “new fact” of wage-slavery we interpret in the light of the “previous knowledge” appertaining to the growth of private property in the means of life ; sin, morality, and a thousand other abstractions we insistently seek in material causes. While your “educationists” are piffling about “faculty doctrines,” etc., while your sociologist is “tabulating the causes of poverty,” the Socialist Party of Great Britain is proclaiming aloud the one cause of poverty— capitalism—and is educating the worker in the only “doctrine” which will “implant wholesome interests,” the doctrine that the emancipation of the working class must be the

WORK OF THE WORKING CLASS ITSELF.

“Realising that, as in the order of social evolution, the working class is the last class to be emancipated, the emancipation of the working class will involve abolition of all class distinctions and class privileges and free humanity from oppression of every kind, the Socialist Party of Great Britain enters the political arena, in full faith that the members of our class will work out

THEIR HISTORIC MISSION,

hurls defiance at all forces of reaction. Generated by capitalist society, heir to the slavery of ages, outcast of civilisation, the working class will prove a fitting instrument of the movement of history, and by the brain and sinew of Labour will arise the Socialist Commonwealth, a society wherein poverty, privilege and oppression will find no place, and wherein all may lead a full, free, and joyous existence.”

Will you come and help ? Does our position demand attention ? What do you think of the “Secret of Marx”? “Recondite?” Maybe. “Portentous ?” Aye, verily.

A. Reginald

[Invitation to “public figures” to give their views on Marx] (1983)

From the March 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

The centenary of Marx's death is a time for his opponents to speak up. in line with the SPGB policy of constantly encouraging the anti-socialists to debate with us, the Socialist Standard wrote to a number of what are called public figures, inviting them to contribute their views on Marx for publication in this issue, with our reply. 

 

Most of them simply ignored us: Denis Healey (who once called himself a Marxist), Gerald Priestland, Lord Chalfont, Robert Conquest (who presumably prefers to put his views to the less rigorous readership of the Daily Telegraph), Piero Sraffa (who might have been expected to take this chance to display his alleged torpedoing of Marx's theory), Robert Miller, Francis Pym (too busy worrying about the Falklands?), Lord Carrington (too busy not worrying any more about the Falklands?), Peter Shore.

 

A few replied with a refusal to take up our offer:

Winston Churchill (". . . he does not wish to contribute. . .")

Norman St. John Stevas (". . . I am not able to make a contribution.")

The Archbishop of Canterbury (''. . . he simply does not have the time available . . .'')

Milton Friedman (". . . I am so heavily committed that there is no way I can contribute.")

Only two agreed to put their opinion: Tony Benn and Brian Crozier. We publish their contributions with our comments and leave our readers to draw their own conclusions about the reluctance of the anti- Marxists to slate their case when they have the chance.

Editors.

An Open Letter to Dave Douglass (1972)

From the December 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Dave,

I see from the News of the World for November 15th that you are the editor of the Trotskyist magazine ‘Mineworkers Internationale’, and that you have published articles addressing the miners on union policy.

You appear to have upset the editor of the News of the World, and the officials of the Communist Party, who say that you are getting the “sane militants” (the C.P.) a bad name.

You wrote (apparently) in one issue of your magazine

“The only long-term justice for the workers will be under a system which they themselves control—a Socialist system.”

and

“Launch the General Strike immediately and occupy the factories, docks, railways without charging, capture the supermarkets and food wholesalers and distribute the food free.”

Hard Enough

And you claim to work for the overthrow of Capitalism.

One can sympathise with your indignation with your exploitation and the fact, as you say, “that Capitalists are making a fortune out of my sweat, discomfort and forfeiture of human dignity”. Fair enough!

But, Dave boy, indignation is not enough! In this business (the class struggle) brains are more important than heart, because our enemy, the Capitalist, is immensely powerful, and helped by a large staff of cunning labour leaders and T.U. Officials.

And I’m going to tell you straight out, that your stuff is doing more harm than good.

First “seize the pits” or “the Supermarkets”, or “the railways”, is rubbish. The workers have a difficult enough job trying seize half-a-pound of steak on a Friday night, without you try to feed them this baloney.

You must begin to learn that the control of the public apparatus of production and distribution is political, not industrial. It is maintained by the Government of the day, if necessary by armed force, although the workers don’t show much evidence of doing any “seizing”, do they? Could it be they’ve too much sense?

The Wrong Interests

Neither are you doing any good trying to cod the miners into taking action for “workers’ control”. The workers will never control Capitalism. What determines class control is ownership, and that ownership is legalised and maintained through Parliament, by the Government of the day, backed by an electoral majority.

It is no business of trade unions to try to usurp the job of a political party. Control of the whole of industry is a political matter concerning the whole capitalist class. The strongest, most militant trade union in the world can do nothing about it and won’t want to, anyway, because people join unions to look after the trade interests, not class interests.

Dave, I’m sorry, but your other stuff urging the miners on strike last year to do as much damage as possible is nonsense too. This is a hang-over from early Russian days when the isolated Bolsheviks sought to create as much dissension abroad as possible, for political propaganda materials.

Strike What For?

I now come to what, for me, is the most stupid and ridiculous nonsense of all. “Launch the General Strike and occupy the factories”. Are you really in your right mind, mate? Don’t you know that whenever the workers have occupied factories, after a few weeks with the wives bringing meals and drinks, they have unoccupied them again?

The capitalists will always beat you at this game; they own everything; they can retire to the Hilton or the country, and starve you out. In fact, the French authorities have said they approve of the strikers occupying the factory because “It keeps the place clean”.

And lastly, the General Strike! What stupid bloody rubbish. First of all, General Strikes for industrial ends are difficult enough, because workers’ action on such a scale concerns the whole capitalist class who have shown repeatedly, all over the world, that they will not hesitate if necessary, to crush strikes by armed force.

But even worse, you are urging a General Strike for “Workers’ Control”, which because you are not clear about it, you call a “Socialist system”.

A Socialist system will and must abolish classes! What are you on about? Will there be wage-workers under Trotskyist “Socialism” then ?

But, worst of all, you are trying to control trade unionists in General Strikes for political purposes — and this is disastrous.

If you claim that all the workers (or a lot of them) are militants, anxious to overthrow Capitalism, why have they got to lose their wages (and some of them, their personal freedom) in General Strikes?

Consciousness Wanted

If they want a General Strike why do they vote for Tory and Labour parties?

If the workers are Socialists, they have a perfectly safe and sane method of abolishing Capitalism, which also happens (as time will show) to be the only possible method — the ballot box.

It is for this reason that the Socialist Party of Great Britain will never support calls for General Strikes for political purposes. People like you, Dave, may feel very strongly, but you haven’t thought very much.

Socialists, in their capacity as trade unionists, because we are exploited like you, and have to join them, say to their fellow workers : Political action is for political parties! Trade union political independence at all costs!

Socialism will be established by a class political party, not the T.U.C., or any trade union.

It Can be Done

Let trade unions mind their own business, the interests of their members.

Let the affairs of the union be run democratically, by the rank-and-file vote, make strikes short and sharp. Procrastination is the death of strikes.

And, lastly, some advice to you, by one who has been right through the Leninist mill himself.

Forget all your Trotskyist dreamworld; it never was right. Look where the Leninist “boring from within” the trade unions has landed the C.P. The very nominees the Communist factions have got “elected” as officials have at times been the first to kick out Communists.

Study Socialism! Get clear on the necessity of conscious political actions by the workers, organised in a political party to take political power, to abolish capitalist control; and replace it by “democratic control”.

This is the road of Success, to Victory.

What you are doing now will only spread apathy as a result of bitter disappointment.

Forget Trotsky, and remember Marx!

Yours for Socialism,

Horatio

11 November 1972.

Telegram sent to the British Association for the Advancement of Science (1960)

From the October 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

Telegram sent to the British Association for the Advancement of Science at their September 1960 Conference in Cardiff.

TODAY YOU WILL DISCUSS WORLD POPULAT1ON PROBLEMS. MAY WE EXPRESS TO YOU OUR CONVICTION THAT THE PROBLEMS OF MASS STARVATION AND MALNUTRITION AMIDST POTENTIAL PLENTY CANNOT BE SOLVED UNLESS PRODUCTION IS CARRIED ON SOLELY IN ORDER TO SATISFY HUMAN NEEDS, UNFETTERED BY ANY CONSIDERATIONS OF FINANCIAL OR NATIONAL GAIN.

IN OUR VIEW IT IS UTOPIAN AND IRRATIONAL TO ATTEMPT TO SOLVE THESE PROBLEMS EXCEPT ON A WORLD-WIDE BASIS OF COMMON OWNERSHIP OF THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION. MEN MUST ORGANISE TO ABOLISH ALL CLASS AND STATE OWNERSHIP OF THE MEANS OF LIVING  – MONEY. THEREBY. BEING RENDERED REDUNDANT. AT LAST MAN COULD GRAPPLE WITH HIS PROBLEMS IN A TRULY HUMAN AND SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT. THE VISIONS OF BACON AND MARX WOULD BECOME THE REALITY.

 

SOCIALIST PARTY OF GREAT BRITAIN.

50 Years Ago: Telegram to British Association (2010)

The 50 Years Ago column from the October 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

Telegram sent to the British Association for the Advancement of Science at their September 1960 Conference in Cardiff.

TODAY YOU WILL DISCUSS WORLD POPULAT1ON PROBLEMS. MAY WE EXPRESS TO YOU OUR CONVICTION THAT THE PROBLEMS OF MASS STARVATION AND MALNUTRITION AMIDST POTENTIAL PLENTY CANNOT BE SOLVED UNLESS PRODUCTION IS CARRIED ON SOLELY IN ORDER TO SATISFY HUMAN NEEDS, UNFETTERED BY ANY CONSIDERATIONS OF FINANCIAL OR NATIONAL GAIN.

IN OUR VIEW IT IS UTOPIAN AND IRRATIONAL TO ATTEMPT TO SOLVE THESE PROBLEMS EXCEPT ON A WORLD-WIDE BASIS OF COMMON OWNERSHIP OF THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION. MEN MUST ORGANISE TO ABOLISH ALL CLASS AND STATE OWNERSHIP OF THE MEANS OF LIVING  – MONEY. THEREBY. BEING RENDERED REDUNDANT. AT LAST MAN COULD GRAPPLE WITH HIS PROBLEMS IN A TRULY HUMAN AND SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT. THE VISIONS OF BACON AND MARX WOULD BECOME THE REALITY.

 

SOCIALIST PARTY OF GREAT BRITAIN.

(Socialist Standard, October 1960).

The crisis: an open letter to trade unionists (2009)

From the September 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

Fellow Workers,

 Capitalism is once again in the middle of one of its periodic economic crises, this time a bigger one than in the recent past. And, as usual, we are the victims. This crisis has been caused, as all capitalist crises are, by the uncontrollable pursuit of profits that drives the capitalist economy.

 With all capitalist businesses chasing profits, one sector of the economy inevitably overexpands in relation to what it can sell. This time it was the US house-building sector. Its overexpansion had an immediate effect on the banking sector which, in its chase after profits, had been engaging in dubious practices. This in turn had a knock-on effect on other sectors and is still working its way through the economy. Which is where we are today, with closed factories and rising unemployment alongside unmet needs.

 Unemployment in Britain is expected to reach 3 million, maybe even before the end of the year. Faced with this economic tsunami, the government has been helpless. They have bailed-out the banks but, apart from that, all they have done is to print more money, but this won’t get production going again. It will just stoke up inflation for later. It looks as if this Labour government will end like all previous Labour governments – leaving office with more unemployed than when they took over. So showing once again that governments can’t control the way capitalism works.

 The capitalist economy will eventually recover but of its own accord, not because of anything the government might do. And not without first putting the working class through many more months of additional misery.

 Recovery will only come when the rate of profit is restored. Which employers are actively seeking to bring about by imposing wage freezes, even wage cuts, watering down pension schemes, and anything else they can think of to reduce their labour costs. Some have even had the cheek to ask their employees to work for nothing. Meanwhile both the Labour government and the Tory opposition are insisting that public sector workers will have to suffer too.

 Workers should fight back. But the crisis has shifted the balance of forces even more in favour of employers. In the best of circumstances, when production is expanding and there is a labour shortage, unions have to work hard to get wages to go up a bit more than inflation. Now, with falling production and rising unemployment, unions can only try to put a brake on the downward slide, only try to stop things getting worse, .

 Ask yourself this: Why should we have to fight the same battles over and over again? Is this the only future? Yes, within the context of the capitalist system of production for profit, it is. But capitalism is not the only possible way of organising the production and distribution of the things we need. There is an alternative.

 Workers can and should organise to end capitalism which forces them to work for wages to live. We should organise to replace it with a system based on producing the things we need simply because we need them and not to make a profit. Production for use, not production for profit. But we can’t control what is produced unless we also own and control the means of production. In short, we need socialism, the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production.

 To achieve this, workers need to take political action. We need to organise not just in trade unions but also as a political party with socialism as its aim and policy. This the Labour Party never was, even though it was originally set up and financed by the trade unions. Its policy was to work for reforms within capitalism. Labour governments did bring in some reforms, but they were never able to make capitalism work in the interests of workers. That’s just not possible. All of them ended up merely managing capitalism and in the only way it can ever be – as a profit-making system in the interests of those who live off profits extracted from the unpaid labour of wage and salary workers. Instead of Labour changing capitalism, capitalism has changed Labour into the miserable band of self-seeking apologists for capitalism that everybody today can see they are. It’s high time the unions stop financing this capitalist party, as some have already done.

 Some are suggesting that, now that existing Labour Party has failed, the unions should set up a new Labour party. That would be a mistake. Labour reformism has failed once and it would fail again. So, let’s not go down that road a second time. Let’s learn the lesson of history that no government can manipulate capitalism to ensure permanent full employment and steadily rising wages, the TUC’s illusion (and not only theirs) of a radiant future. Which, even if possible, would still leave the exploitation of wage-labour for profit on which capitalism is based.

 No, what is needed is, as we said, a party with socialism as its aim and policy, an instrument workers can use to win control of political power with a view to ending capitalist ownership and the wages system and to bring in the common ownership of the means of production so that these can be used to meet people’s needs in accordance with the principle “from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs”.

Socialism is still the hope of humanity. Let’s work for it.

The Executive Committee,

The Socialist Party of Great Britain.

August 2009

Our challenge to Blair (2003)

From the April 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

Just before he gave the green light for the current slaughter we sent Blair the following challenge.

Mr. Blair,

I have been asked by our Campaigns Department to issue a challenge to you to publicly debate with a representative of the Socialist Party. This would concern what you would see as your ‘moral’ perspective regarding the impending war on Iraq.

In such a debate, the Socialist Party will seek to clearly demonstrate three things:

1. That, in pressing for war, you are primarily serving the interests of factions of the capitalist class in the USA (and Britain), capitalist factions which are bent on expanding their corporate interests in the Middle East;
2. That you are acting against the interests of ordinary working people in Iraq, Britain and the USA, and, indeed, against the interests of the world-wide working class;
3. That, given the nature of modern warfare, you and your administration will have to share responsibility, with George W. Bush and his administration, for the murder of innocent people in Iraq.

In case you should feel that security issues might preclude you from participating in the type of public forum favoured by The Socialist Party, we can say that we would agree to your choice of venue.

I look forward to hearing from you in early course.

Yours for a humane and war-free socialist world.

The Socialist Party.

The reply from Downing Street:

‘The Prime Minister has asked me to thank you for your letter of 11 March inviting him to a public debate with a representative of the Socialist Party.

Sadly, the very heavy pressure on the Prime Minister’s diary at the present time makes it impossible for him to join you for a debate, and he must therefore decline your kind invitation. He is sorry to have to send a disappointing reply.

Yours sincerely,

Katie Kay’

We can understand that Blair has more pressing things to do at present – like organising a war to install a puppet regime in Iraq which will help ensure a secure and steady supply of oil for western corporate capitalism.

Join the campaign against all war!

Join the Socialist Party!

Classic Reprint: To a New Reader (1959)

From the August 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

The journal which you are now reading is published each month. For many years it has appeared as surely as night has followed day. Just as surely, each month a copy drifts into the hands of many who have not read it before. This copy has drifted into your hands for the first time, maybe at a street-corner propaganda meeting, from one of the all-too-few newsagents who stock it, or from one of the enthusiastic workers who sell it in the streets and at railway stations. It would be fair to assume that you are an anti-Socialist or non-Socialist; that you bought the Socialist Standard because a particular article caught your eye, or because some question dealt with by a speaker interested you. Probably you did not buy it because you wanted to learn about Socialism. You “know” all there is to be known about that, don’t you? And yet, fellow-worker, you are reading a journal you have never seen before, describing itself as the official organ of the Socialist Party, which claims to be the only party in Great Britain organised for Socialism. Moreover, you will find in these columns the opinion implicitly and openly expressed that the reason for workers not supporting the Socialist Party is because they do not understand Socialism. Your reactions we can imagine. It is the first time you have read the Socialist Standard, and, after all, you did think you knew about Socialism. You think us arrogant? And our claim to be the only party organised for Socialism just advertising ballyhoo, as it were. To call attention to our wares. Fellow-worker, our claims are not arrogant; we are not engaged in ballyhoo. Workers organised in this party are THE Socialist Party of Great Britain and the only workers organised for Socialism.

What is Socialism?

You, fellow-worker, “know” all about Socialism, don’t you?

You “know” that Socialism means “share and share alike,” that is to say, that you should share your belongings with your neighbour. And knowing your neighbour, you decide against Socialism. You “know” that Socialism means some vague mush about “loving your neighbour,” and again looking at your neighbour you feel uninspired. You “know” that Socialism means the destruction of initiative and inventiveness, and being young (or not so old) and ambitious you feel that the present order of things should not be upset. You “know” that Socialism means that woman would occupy a degraded position in the social arrangement. For hasn’t the Morning Rail often turned your stomach in its description of the free love of the Socialists and the nationalisation of women. You ”know” that Socialism has been tried in different parts of the earth. After all, the self-styled “Socialists'' have said so.

Quite bluntly, fellow-worker, you know little or nothing about Socialism. In truth, if Socialism did mean the things which these mangled ideas try to express then the working men and women who are organised in the Socialist Party would turn to some other more intelligent pursuit.

Production for use

Socialism does not mean sharing out either goods or income. Such a conception implies a fixed amount of social wealth, out of which each took an equal share. Socialism means something fundamentally different from that. It means the social ownership of the means for producing wealth. Consider for a moment the factory in which you work. Each worker, out of perhaps many thousands, has his particular job to do. Yet no one worker produces the finished article, which the factory, as a whole, produces. Each worker plays his part, but the product is the result of the indispensable work of all. Production is a co-operative process. As in the factory, so in society generally. The work and life of the community is carried on by the workers as a whole. No one worker or group of workers is independent of the rest. One worker can play his part in steering a ship, but the labour of many thousands is required to build it. The worker who steers the ship could not do so without the builders. Production is social.

Yet outside the productive process is the class who own the means of production. It takes no part in social production and is unnecessary to it. Socialism means the social ownership of the social means of production. This will eliminate the owning class. Quite a simple proposition to conceive, but profound and revolutionary in its implications. Far from Socialism meaning the sharing-out of some imaginary fixed quantity of wealth, social ownership will release the powers of production from the fetters of private ownership. It will bring into productive activity an enormous number of workers now engaged in unproductive labour. Production will expand to correspond to the people's needs. The people will take from the social store as they have need. Initiative and inventiveness will have the chance to thrive, instead, as now, of being dependent on the ability of the worker to sell his abilities to a capitalist. Cut-throat competition for jobs will no longer exist and the mushy sentiment of brotherly love will have an opportunity to acquire real meaning.

So we could go on, stating and answering the common objections to Socialism. But we want to do more than that. We want your interest. Whilst we tell you that you know nothing about Socialism your interest is perhaps not easy to obtain. But be patient. Ask yourself what time you have devoted to a study of the question. Is your conception of Socialism the result of independent thinking, or has it acquired shape from the influence of biased or coloured sources more interested in misrepresenting it? Think that out and be wary. Perhaps you have not had the time to study Socialism. However, you are reading the Socialist Standard and we assume that you want knowledge, and want to assist in removing the social evils of capitalism if you knew how. We know that only Socialism will solve these problems. We know that Socialism will come. Make up your mind about that. More, the time will come when there can be no ordered intelligent living, no progress, no harmony in social relations; national or international, without Socialism. The lessons of the Socialist message will be learned through the experience of bitter struggle. That struggle can be eased and shortened by the spread of Socialist understanding. That is our responsibility. Yours is surely to examine our case. And that is what we ask you to do.

Socialist Standard

In the course of years we have answered all known objections to Socialism in the Socialist Standard. We can let you have back numbers if you wish. Read the Socialist Standard for the next twelve months and you will be much nearer an understanding of our position than you are to-day. One issue may modify some popular misconception in your mind, but it would be insufficient to convince you of the soundness of our case. One prejudice we are certain will disappear—that working men and women cannot understand the meaning of the apparently complicated events around. They can. You can. We have. And we lay no claim to more than average brains. But we have devoted many years to the study of Socialism. We know something about it. You know little. Quite naturally; we should be in a similar position regarding a subject to which you had devoted long study. We are not of superior intelligence. We do claim, however, that we have found ourselves on the road to Socialism (perhaps, in the first place by accident) and that you would be with us with a little guidance. We are workers drawn from representative occupations, miners, mechanics, carpenters, busmen, clerical workers, artists, house-wives, and so forth. We have a case—the case for the social ownership of the means and instruments of production. Study our case and we are certain that you will soon be in the fight for Socialism.

Harry Waite

Reprinted from Socialist Standard, January 1938.

Open letter to students (2000)

From the October 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

Welcome to higher education: just another few years before you have to put yourselves up for sale on the labour market

When you finish your university studies, the time will come to put yourself up for sale on the labour market. This means becoming a wage slave (or, if you’re a snob, a salary slave), working for other human beings who happen to own or control enough wealth to be able to be an employer of labour.

A not very dignified position, but something all those whose fathers who are not millionaires (whether great landowners or City crooks) have to do at some stage. Most people have to try to sell themselves at a much earlier age—at 16 or 17—and many fail to find a buyer.

Some, like yourselves, put off the evil day for another five or so years while acquiring additional skills that will, hopefully, enable you to command a higher price on the labour market. In fact, what you will be doing over the next three years is enhancing the value of what you will be selling—your mental and intellectual skills.

Some of you, too, won’t find a buyer, at least not for a few years. But then that’s the lot of the wage slave: to be dependent on finding an employer in order to have anything other than a miserable standard of living on some hand-out from the State.

The best-paid jobs available to university graduates—lawyers, accountants, advertisers—tend to be those which are the most useless from the point of view of serving human needs. Even those of you who will have useful skills—such as scientists and computer experts—will find that the best-paid jobs are doing research connected with military or commercial ends. But that’s the fault of the system and nothing can be done about it till the whole money-wages-profit set-up is done away with.

Open letter to Arthur Scargill (1979)

From the August 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Arthur,

I read with interest the ‘profile’ article on you in The Observer supplement (17 June) and, in particular, your political views expressed therein.

You plainly believe that workers’ interests can best be served in the political field through the Labour Party, of which you are an active and committed member. I see also that you subscribe to the “Marxist interpretation of society” that there are “two classes in Britain, the ruling class which owns and controls the means of production, distribution and exchange, and the working class which provides the labour and is exploited by the ruling class.” Here you are dead right. You will also no doubt accept the view that the ruling class effects its rule through the state, which is the ‘executive committee of the ruling class’ and can only operate in the interests of that class.

But here we come up against a rather sticky problem. You say correctly that society today is a class society. What this means is that hitherto no ‘government’ (and this includes every single Labour government there has been, with or without majority support in Parliament) has done away with class ownership and control of the means of production, whether it has professed a desire to or not. The very fact that there still is a capitalist class — and a working class — is all the evidence we need for saying this. So every Labour government has lived with — and perpetuated — class ownership of the means of living.

But by perpetuating and not abolishing class ownership. Labour governments have therefore pursued the interests of the ruling class — the capitalists — for how else can a class-based society be run, except in the interests of its ruling class? Since the state is the ‘executive committee of the ruling class’, those who hold the reins of state power (governments), in order to perpetuate class ownership as every Labour government has done, must therefore be protecting, promoting and pursuing the interests of the ruling class.

However, since the interests of the workers and the capitalists, of wage labour and capital, are diametrically opposed — a fundamental Marxian proposition which I am sure your vast practical experience in the industrial field will bear out — how then can any Labour government, by acting in the interests of the capitalist ruling class, not be acting against the interests of the working class? In short, not to put too fine a point on it, how can you reconcile being a trade union activist as well as a member of what is in effect, despite all its appealing slogans, a capitalist anti-working class party?

This fundamental flaw in your thinking the belief that the Labour Party represents the interests of the workers is unfortunately shared by many trade unionists. The consequence of this is that the effectiveness of trade unionism itself is impaired. The so-called ‘understanding’ between the Labour Party and the unions has facilitated the task of Labour governments in imposing on workers anti-working class policies, some of which would even look bad coming from the Tories. It is therefore all the more important that trade unionists should extricate themselves from the spiders web of blind sentimental loyalty to the Labour Party which has kept them spellbound with promises of ‘jam tomorrow’ (always tomorrow!), and take a long hard look at what Labour governments, all Labour governments, have meant in practice (which in the end is what really counts).

Now you might agree with this criticism of Labour governments — it’s surprising the number of Labour Party supporters who would, yet still cannot draw the logical conclusion. Indeed, I see that according to The Observer you feel that the Parliamentary Labour Party has “betrayed its membership and the working class”. This is the usual excuse offered by the Labour left for the inevitable failure of Labour governments to run capitalism in the interests of the majority. The assumption behind this excuse is that the Labour Party is still worth supporting as a means to introduce socialism, if only a more ‘left wing’ leadership can be formed within the Labour Party. How the principle of ‘leadership’ can be reconciled with the opposing revolutionary Marxist principle that working class emancipation must be the conscious act of the working class itself, is something, of course, which the left does not care to explain.

But if past Labour governments have all been capitalist (there cannot be such a thing as a socialist ‘government’ anyway), are there any grounds for hoping that a Labour Party led by left-wingers will hasten the advent of socialism? Well, what is it that the Labour left are aiming for? No doubt that famous Clause Four of the Labour Party constitution which you call a “Marxist prescription for a new society” would be regarded by many of the left as an adequate description of their aim. This clause, as you know, calls for the ‘common ownership’ of the means of production, distribution and exchange, by which is meant ‘state ownership’, which the left would equate with a ‘classless socialist society’.

If the state is a product of class society, as Marxists believe, why would there be ‘state ownership’? Further, if goods and services are exchanged — bought and sold on a market — does this not suggest a private property set-up? If everyone owned all the means of production — that is to say, if there was common ownership — how could there be ‘exchange’ of what was produced? Exchange implies that sonic own and some do not.

In every exchange transaction there is a conflict of economic interests: it is in the interests of the seller to sell his commodity for as much as he can get, while the buyer’s interests would be to purchase this commodity for as little as possible. The commodity you as a trade union negotiator are especially concerned with is labour power, the skills of your members. Ironically, the buyer of this commodity is a state enterprise which, according to left wing theory, is the property of you, me and everyone else in the country. This, however, does not make any difference to the fact that workers in state industries have to struggle just as much as those in private industries for better wages and conditions, against employers who are determined whenever possible to intensify workers’ exploitation or, if insufficient profits are forthcoming, to make workers redundant. And despite the fact that ‘we’ are all supposed to own British Rail, for example, personally I don’t think I can afford to run the risk of taking this too literally by travelling on British Rail without a ‘ticket’, any more than I would be prepared to risk walking straight past the cash tills of ‘my’ local privately-owned supermarket with a bag-load of unpaid-for goodies. No cash means no goodies or railway trips.

In other words, there is basically no difference between private ownership and state ownership as far as the working class is concerned: the latter is just as much minority ownership and control of the means of living, except that this minority exercises its ownership collectively through the state rather than individually through private firms. State capitalism, as this is called, is still capitalism, with all the conflicts and contradictions that that implies.

There is an alternative to all forms of capitalism. Socialism entails that all wealth should be produced solely for use, not for sale or barter, and made freely available to all in abundance. Modern industry and technology is more than capable of producing this, but for capitalism and its restrictive rule: no profit, no production. Only in this sense of the word can we meaningfully talk about ‘common ownership’. Socialism, then, means quite literally ‘from each according to ability, to each according to need’. Unfortunately our task is made doubly difficult by the unsound views advanced by the left.

Yours for socialism, 

Robin Cox

An Open Letter to ‘Reclaim the Streets’ (2000)

From the January 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Friends,

There has been a radical shift, in radical politics, from single issue campaigns within capitalism to attacks on capitalism as a system. As one focus for this shift “Reclaim the Streets” is to be commended. However, whilst J18 attacked capitalism as a whole, using the City as a focus, there was a worrying trend during N30 to make Seattle and the WTO—”fair trade not free trade”—the focus, thus leaving capitalism as a whole unscathed.

There are no nice capitalists. Capitalists in the Third World are just as ruthless and just as exploitative as their First World brethren. The debate over globalisation is a ruling class debate over how they divide the spoils from their collective exploitation of us. A peasant gets peanuts for growing peanuts because that is the going rate for peanuts in the world economy. If the price of peanuts is raised, the local exploiter will gain at the expense of the First World importer, and the peasant still gets peanuts. Anyone still unsure of the rapacity of Third World rulers should take a quick look at Burma/Myanmar, Indonesia, etc. As revolutionaries we should fight the collective war between us and the ruling class, not play the hostage game at their bargaining table.

We have nothing to say to our rulers on how to run capitalism, we should not be drawn into fighting their battles, and we should certainly not be drawn into rolling history back instead of forwards, as a global revolution must be made globally.

Thankfully the Left-wing is dying. Good riddance! It was always the campaign for “real” i.e. manufacturing capitalism against finance and landed interests, and its demise is only a sign of capitalism’s maturity, not its triumph. We must return to the working class agenda, subverted by the Left, of calling for the abolition of capitalism rather than its “fair” administration. In a world where we are the slaves of many masters rather than one, and are told that the choice of masters is our freedom, the only action of any meaning to us is the abolition of the wages system, and thus of work as we understand it. A world which we own, and create, has no place in it for ruining men and women’s minds and bodies with employment, enslavement, or any other constraint on their mutual enjoyment of their creations. But be warned—the Left is trying to subvert your movement! The SWP, in particular, has been seen trying to recruit young and eager minds with their state capitalist poison, even at regular RTS co-ordination meetings when you and others are not represented.

The use of violence is counterproductive, as many in RTS realise. The state is strongest in its use of force, and weakest in its legitimisation of that force. Virtually all of the state’s hired thugs and hired killers are working class, from working class homes, and only function within mass organisations of repression because the state explains their actions to them as being in society’s interests. Ten years ago, Eastern Europe learned how impotent these forces are against a working class which has destroyed state legitimacy by peaceful action. As a class we run society from top to bottom, and revolutionary action lies in effectively communicating that message to each other: once legitimacy falls, the state falls. This is precisely why these forces provoke violence, with snatch squads, baton charges and horses, so that we will respond with violence and justify their repression. You don’t need to keep it fluffy—sullen resentment will do fine.

As members of the World Socialist Movement, we are glad to see the emergence of organisations attacking capitalism as a system rather than merely its particular evils. In Britain, we in the Socialist Party have stood since 1904 for the abolition of capitalism, and the establishment of socialism, i.e. the abolition of money, private property and the state. For most of that time the working class agenda has been dominated by those who said that socialism was about running capitalism better, be it Russia, China, Cuba, Labour, Sweden, etc. Now that this presence is lifting we find that many thousands have arrived at the same conclusions as ourselves, but have organised along the lines of the anarchist tradition. Whilst its diversity has allowed revolutionary ideas to flourish (as well as several reactionary ones!) it has the opposite problem to the Left. They are monolithic, but anarchism is fragmented.

We can only hope that RTS develops beyond its teething troubles, by shedding particular campaigns for the improvement of capitalism, into a general and radical attack on capitalism itself. You already have that programme in ideal, via the Situationists who seem to inspire much of your propaganda. We ourselves have spent nearly a century struggling for an authentic socialist movement, and understand the difficulties. We have a history, theory and organisation designed precisely for that revolutionary project towards which RTS is hopefully heading. We would urge all those in RTS who back the project for abolishing capitalism to meet and discuss with our organisation. We both have things to learn.

Contact us. Our branches are listed on a link from our home page, or email our Head Office, again from our home page. We look forward to hearing from you.

Yours for world socialism,

Simon Wigley

An open letter to the workers of the world (2004)

From the May 2004 issue of the World Socialist newsletter

The world we live in is one that is fraught with contradictions. Some 800 million of our fellow humans are chronically malnourished and at least 1.2 billion will, on any one day, go without food.

At the same time, the governments of the world destroy of vast amounts of food to keep prices high. They stockpile food until it rots and pay farmers to take land out of production. Why? Because the laws of supply and demand insist that you cannot eat unless they can make money from it.

600 million people are homeless, many sleeping on the streets, yet there is no shortage of vacant buildings and certainly no shortage of building materials. Again, we find that the market not only dictates who does and does not eat, but who does and does not have a home.

Over one billion have no access to clean water, while its growing scarcity will cause many wars this coming century. Meanwhile, the technology exists to desalinate millions of gallons each day and to set up treatment plants capable of cleaning the dirtiest water. However, there is not much profit in selling something which covers five-sixth’s of the planet, so the investment never comes.

Millions of children die each year of curable diseases, we still await breakthroughs in medical science. But there are literally thousands of scientists around the world employed in weapons programs – paid by their respective governments to devise new methods of murder, including germ warfare.

The list is as endless as it is insane. At every turn we see how capitalism destroys us physically and emotionally. At every turn we come smack up against the law of our age – “can’t pay, can’t have”. At every turn we find capitalism infecting all it comes into contact with.

Capitalism has enabled some fantastic technological feats. Demands of war sparked a race for rocket technology that has explored the furthest limits of the solar system. The search for oil and other resources has plumbed the deepest oceans and map out the ocean beds. We can split the atom, map the human genome, and perform amazing organ transplants. Nothing, it seems, is beyond us. Our capabilities are awe-inspiring. Sadly, in spite of the technology at our disposal, the never-ending demand for profits means that we have entered the 21st century with us every social ill that plagued the previous century. War, hunger, poverty, disease, and homelessness are still with us, and are rooted in the way we continue to organize our society. The irony is we are already capable of solving the major problems that face us. And we have been capable of solving them for quite some time – just not within capitalism.

Over 20 years ago, the World Health Organization announced that the ability existed to feed a world population twelve times its (then) size. However, the requirements of profit everywhere act as a stumbling block not only to the full use of the productive forces, but also to the full and unhindered use of science and technology in the service of humanity.

Socialists long ago realized that the problems we face are in fact social problems, because they have their roots in the way our world is organized for the production of profit, not need.

When you think about it,you’ll be hard pressed to find any aspect of our lives that is not subordinated to the requirements of profit. And this is the case the world over.

What is to be done?

If this is the case, then what can we do about it? Real socialists believe the only way forward lies in abolishing the money/wages/profit system that we know as capitalism and establishing a world of free access to the benefits of human knowledge. Then can we assert control over our own destiny, where we can enjoy a world in which there is no waste, pollution, want or war.

Since 1904, the World Socialist Movement has been advocating the establishment of such a system: a global society based upon the common and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing the things people need to live.

We advocate a world without borders, social classes, leaders, governments and armies. A world without money or wages, exchange, buying and selling. Where people can give freely of their abilities and take according to their own self-defined needs. A global system in which each person has a free and democratic say in how their world is run.

Human nature no barrier

Many people agree that such a world should be a beautiful place to live in. But they believe that “human nature” will always be a barrier, because humans are “by nature” greedy, selfish and aggressive. It is apparent what they are describing is not innate human nature, but behavior exhibited under particular circumstances. A human behavior shaped by the kind of system people are brought up in. Nobody is born as a racist or a patriot, as a bigot or with a belief in gods. Nobody is born a murderer, a robber or a rapist, and our alleged greed for money is no more a function of the natural human thought process than were slavery or witch burning.

The ideas of working people have been usually been acquired secondhand, passed down from the ruling class above us. Because the class which owns and controls the productive process, they also control the society’s intellectual life. Anti-social behavior is influenced by social circumstances at any given time, i.e., when we are poor, depressed, lonely, angry and frustrated.

Those who produce the world’s wealth are given educations which makes free-thought difficult. Our upbringings conditions us to accept without question the ideas of our “leaders”, bosses and superiors. The education system is geared to perpetuate the rule of an elite, insofar as it never encourages children to question and take issue with the status quo.

We believe that humans are by nature cooperative. For example look when communities are faced with the disasters, our humanity shines through and we “pull together” and cooperate to get through. There are millions of cases of people donating their blood and organs to complete strangers, sacrificing their lives for others, of people giving countless hours of their free time to charitable work – all of this without financial incentive.

Today, world capitalism threatens the human race with extinction. The reason this obnoxious system survives is because we accept it. Rest assured, no gene inclines us to defend the profit system.

Socialism hasn’t been tried

Many tell us that socialism has been tried and has failed. They then point to the former Soviet Union, to China, Cuba, etc., etc. But what was passed off as socialism was in fact state capitalism. A glance at these countries reveals they never abolished the wage system. Workers were exploited to support ruling classes and and those rulers outlawed dissent. They produced only profitable to do so, traded according to the dictates of international capital and were prepared to go to war to defend their economic interests.

Moreover it was believed that socialism could be established by force and that socialism could exist in one country. The Bolsheviks maintained that the revolution could only be carried out by a minority vanguard party and that workers were unable to understand the case for change.

Since 1904, our movement has maintained that socialism, like capitalism, can only exist on a global scale. Socialism will only come about when a majority of the world’s people want it and are prepared to organize for it peacefully and democratically. No vanguard can establish socialism – as Marx said: “the

emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself”.

We can do it

Agreeing with Marx, the WSM believes that there are two classes in society – the working class and the capitalist class, each determined by its relationship to the means of living. The capitalist class own and control the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth, and live as parasites off profits, rent and interest. The working class, own little more than our ability to sell our physical and mental abilities to the highest bidder.

The working class runs the world and it is important to grasp this fact. It is we who fish the oceans and tend the forests and till the land and plantations. It is we who build the cities and railroads, the bridges and roads, the docks and airports. It is we who staff the hospitals and schools,who empty the bins and go down the sewers. It is workers who produce everything society needs and provides all of its services.

The capitalists and their governments have no monopoly on our skills and abilities. These belong to us. Most inventions and improvements are the result of those who do the actual work thinking up easier ways of completing a task. The result of ideas being passed down, each one improving the techniques of the previous generations. If those who work so much in a world hobbled by the profit motive, then how much more are we capable of providing in a world free from profits?

Capitalism must go

We must admit that capitalism has raised some potentials of humanity. It is now quite possible to provide a comfortable living for every human on the planet. But if we follow the capitalist trajectory, we’re in for some pretty troublesome times.

But capitalism is a barrier to the fair and needed use of the world’s productive forces. In a world of potential abundance, profit imposes widespread artificial scarcity. Billions of humans are consigned to a life of abject poverty, whilst millions more live lives filled with uncertainty.

Our ability to imagine has brought us from the days when our ancestors chipped away at the first tools. Is it really such a huge leap of the imagination to envision a social system that can take over from the capitalist order?

Do we really need leaders deciding our lives for us? Do we need governments administering our lives when what is needed is the administration of the things? Must every decision be decided by what is the most profitable? Many don’t think so and have mobilized to confront what they perceive as major problems with capitalism.

There has been a worldwide backlash against globalization, corporate power and other iniquities of capitalism. Everywhere where the world’s elite have assembled, they have been met with protests that have attracted hundreds of thousands. Demonstrations in Seattle, etc. have fueled ongoing debate on the nature of capitalism. And thousands of articles have been published that explore the alternatives offered by the anti-globalisation movement.

It is now clear is that the anti-globalisation movement cannot replace capitalism with any real alternative social system. It simply is a loose coalition of different groups, each pursuing their own agenda. Some the reform of international institutions. Others call for fairer trading conditions. All, however, fail to address the root cause of the problems of capitalism.

Capitalism cannot be reformed in the interests of the world’s billions, because reform does not address the basic contradiction between profit and need. Governments cannot be depended upon because they only act as an executive of capitalism. An expansion of democracy, while welcome, makes little difference if candidates can only offer variations on the same policies.

Capitalism must be abolished if we as a species are to thrive. No amount of reform, however great, will work. Change must be global and irreversible. It must involve all of us. We need to erase borders and frontiers; to abolish states and governments and false concepts of nationalism. We need to abolish our money systems, and with it buying, selling and exchange. And in place of this we need to establish a different global social system – a society in which there is common ownership and true democratic control of the Earth’s natural and industrial resources. A society where the everyday things we need to live in comfort are produced and distributed freely and for no other reason than that they are needed. Socialism.

It is not an utopian fantasy to suggest we can live in such a world. We certainly have the know-how. All that is missing is the will – the desire for change that can make that advance possible; a belief in ourselves as masters of our own destiny; a belief that it is possible to fashion a world in our own interests.

Socialists build that new world, by building the understanding of what Socialism will be like. And we need your help. Socialism needs your writing, organizing and artistic skills. Please join us.

JB/FNB

Blogger's Note:

A version of this article also appeared in the May 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard. I'm not altogether sure which is the original version.

50 Years Ago: Conference Report (2022)

The 50 Years Ago column from the May 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

The 1972 Annual Conference of the Socialist Party of Great Britain was held at Conway Hall, London, over Easter and was attended by delegates and visitors from many parts of Britain. Among the resolutions passed were ones criticising the format of the Socialist Standard for being too formal, calling for consideration of publishing Russia 1917-67 in German and committing the Party to contesting at least one seat in every General Election. (…)

At one point the proceedings were undemocratically interrupted by a group calling themselves “the London Situationists” who noisily stopped a discussion on the need to develop Marxist theory in order to hand out An Open Letter to the SPGB. This turned out to be a peculiar amalgam of Freudian pseudo-psychology (both Marcuse and Reich, despite their opposing views), some organisational ideas and an ill-informed criticism of our policy of conscious political action, via the ballot box and Parliament, to establish Socialism. The organisational criticism boiled down to saying that the time was not yet ripe for a formal, centralised socialist group, while the political criticism failed to take into account that the Socialist Party has never said that the establishment of Socialism involves just a few million X’s for Socialism followed by a parliamentary resolution. We have always said that Socialism can only be established by a conscious, participating working class organised not only politically to capture and destroy the State machine but also outside parliament ready to take over and run industry and society generally.

The best—and most readable (most of it is written in mock political French)—part of the document which called for “the automated economy of abundance’’ was clearly influenced by our thinking anyway. Unfortunately, though they will the end they don’t will the means. The spectre of the Russian Revolution still haunts them: their alternative of our policy is “workers’ councils”, i.e. soviets!

(Socialist Standard, May 1972)

Letter to a Sympathiser (1951)

From the September 1951 issue of the Socialist Standard

Friend,

This is by way of being a recruiting letter. Recruiting is in the fashion these days, despite the fact that the war to defeat the aggressive nations and make the world “Safe for Democracy,” etc., etc., ended only six years ago. Everywhere one goes there are highly coloured posters illustrating the luxurious life one can lead in the Armed Forces (incidentally one proof that the Labour Government has to administer Capitalism pretty much the same way as any other political party whose policy is based on reform and maintenance of this “Production for Profit” system under which all— repeat, all—“civilised” countries operate).

However, we feel no shame or guilt in inviting you to join the Socialist Party of Great Britain. It is no boast when we say that it is the only political party in this country worthy of working-class support; the only party whose sole object is the overthrow of this fantastic system whereby the majority of human beings —the working class—produce the wealth of the world for the small minority—the capitalists—who own it. You are a worker, so we need hardly tell you that the share you are allowed to have in this wealth just about keeps you living from week to week and capable of producing the goods you cannot possess.

You have listened to our speakers many times and have read the literature we print, so you know that the system we wish to see established, Socialism, under which all human beings will own in common, and have free access to, the world’s wealth, cannot be brought about by tinkering with or patching up by means of reform, the system existing now. For this reason, you do not give your support to the Labour, Tory, Liberal or Communist parties, or any other political organisation—you have seen through their promises of better conditions if only you put them in power. Yet you are not with us in the S.P.G.B. . . . It may be because you feel despondent and think the task of establishing Socialism an almost impossible one in the face of the powerful propaganda pumped into the working class by all the means capitalists have at their disposal—radio, newspapers, politicians and so on. But look at the problem in this way—modern Capitalism requires a trained working class to run it, it is no longer a matter of using brute force against Nature in order to produce wealth. Trained people cannot be kept wholly in the dark about world events, therefore the owning class have to “spill the beans” to you and your fellow workers, in half-truths at least. Join with us in laying bare to members of our class the facts behind the news, so that they too can analyse it and draw their own conclusions and not those ready-made for them. All the propaganda will then be useless and the world will move forward to Socialism at a greatly increased rate. You see, it all depends on you! Our organisation is small, but it is based on principles sound and irrefutable, which in the forty-seven years of the Party’s existence, have never had to give way to expediency.

If we have your help and that of our many other sympathisers, we will grow, and your despondency will vanish. Just now you may have an indefinable and deep sense of dissatisfaction; life is just drudgery and purposeless, merely a matter of existing from day to day, even if you are one of those “lucky” workers producing beautiful and useful things—unlike the millions who are engaged in many utterly worthless tasks peculiar to Capitalism and its monetary and profit system. There are many outlets in the S.P.G.B. which will help to counteract this. There is the satisfaction to be gained by helping with our many outdoor meetings, pushing up the sales of our pamphlets and the Socialist Standard, or writing articles for the latter. There are worthwhile discussions and lectures at branch meetings. By no means least, there is the comradeship one feels in being engaged with others in working for a sane system of society.

When can we expect your membership application form?

S. G.

Your Gods, O Israel. (1940)

From the March 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

An Open Letter to the Rank and File of the Labour Party.

Believe me, you misunderstand the outlook of our Party; I know you have heard your leaders “slanged” from our soap-boxes from time to time. But I would ask you on this point to remember that the object in view is always to “point a moral.” Remember also, that criticism is often founded on pretty acid comments derived from Labour Party sources. I recollect on one occasion discussing some obvious careerists in the Labour Party with a late M.P. In richest Scots he finally wailed, “Yes. There are aching hear-r-ts within the Labour Party itself”—an admission that would hardly have been made other than in a private discussion.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain has the utmost respect for the sincere, self-sacrificing rank-and-filers in your Party; its regret is only the deeper that a strong fund of Good Intentions should only be assisting to pave the way to an even worser Hell than Capitalism has hitherto prepared for our class.

The trouble with you and your fellows is twofold; first, you lack SOCIALIST knowledge; second, you are perpetually on the look-out for “leaders.”

As to the first point: You seldom grasp what Socialism involves (READ OUR “OBJECT” carefully); even those among you who have a fairly adequate conception allow your “leader ” to label their sorry mess of meagre Reforms as “Socialism” ; those among you who seek refuge in “Well, they will help to build up Socialism,” should seriously consider the case of Russia, where sweeping Reforms have resulted in a State Capitalism undistinguishable in essential features (more especially as regards personal liberty) from its unholy Nazi twin brother. And remember, for years the S.P.G.B. has clearly indicated the real nature of Russian developments, while your feeble leaders were crying aloud for close union with “Peace-loving Russia.”

Which brings me again to this question of leadership.

Mr. Hugh Dalton served in a Labour Government. A year ago, writing in “your” official Organ, Dalton had the effrontery to declare that (through Arthur Henderson’s “policy”) “Labour had wiped War off the map.” Dalton in any case is not lacking in historical knowledge. He must have known that in 1935 a letter was addressed to George Lansbury “by 37 Indians resident in London, drawing attention to the fact that during the period of the last Labour Party Government, of which he was a member, approximately 4,000 lives of unarmed people were destroyed by the armed action of the British authorities in India.” . . .” Aching hear-r-ts!”

Incidentally this same George Lansbury has his heroes too. “I think history will record HERR HITLER as one of the GREAT MEN of our time.” His book, “My Quest for Peace,” must have fallen pretty flat for this not to have been more commented upon. Still, the one-time leader of His Majesty’s Opposition had given his rank and file a tip for hurling the dart right near the bull’s-eye of GREATNESS.

My dear young friend, I do not deny that Arthur Henderson knew his way about the political world and was an excellent father. I would not question that Hugh Dalton was a first-rate lecturer in a mildly “Left” College, that “good old George” has a Big ‘Eart, but I ask you to carefully consider whether these qualities entitle them to your often pathetic, dog-like, wistful cry for guidance.

Yes. Plainly and plumply, the S.P.G.B. repudiates Leadership.

Ponder for a moment the following, culled from the Bristol Evening Post: —

“Young lady typists were extra keen to secure some memento of the King’s visit. One obtained the serviette he used, while the King’s cigarette-end and the match he used to light his cigarette were secured by another. One girl, not to be outdone, poured the remains of the King’s teacup into a bottle, which she took home.”

Pretty disgusting, most of you, I feel sure, will say. But can’t you see that this particular piece of reaction to Royalty is only an extreme outcome of submission to leadership; these typists are rotten ripe for a Heil Churchill, Heil Pollitt regime. Then there is Mr. Dollan, who wrote in Forward:—”No scarcity of commodities; Plenty for all. . . . If that is the economic doctrine of King Edward, he will have plenty of assistance from Socialists in carrying it into effect.”

Lansbury holds that “The King is as good a Socialist as Bernard Shaw.” (As a matter of fact he is, but George didn’t mean it like that.)

Ponder carefully the two following statements : “We all love great men; love, venerate, and bow down submissive.” (Carlyle). “The human race is gradually learning the simple lesson that the people as a whole are wiser for the public good than any privileged race of men, however refined and cultivated they have ever been, or by any possibility can ever become” (Lewis Morgan, in “Ancient Society”).

In the first lies embedded the real creed of your “leaders,” however they may protest otherwise to you when the election job is on hand. In that creed, slick Labour leaders are helping to prepare new horrors for their misguided followers.

Lewis Morgan (first among ethnologists) proclaimed a creed which pervades and informs with Life the stern political frame of Socialist doctrine as laid down in our “eight points.”

Which will you choose? Never was a time when choice was more incumbent upon you.

Yours in the Galling Chains of the Working Class Fraternity,

Augustus Snellgrove