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What Is Socialism?

Why are growing numbers of people considering becoming socialists? It is clearly not because socialism is widely publicised.

 By Hannah Sell

None of the major political parties are socialist, socialism does not feature on the national curriculum in schools, and the TV is not packed with programmes arguing in favour of it.

On the contrary, if you were to judge purely by the media, parliament, or the education system, you would decide that socialism is a spent force.

Anti-Capitalist

And yet, it clearly isn't. Ideas traditionally associated with the left are increasingly popular. In a Mori poll in 2001, for example, 72% of people supported renationalisation of the railway system, despite none of the major parties calling for it.

Growing numbers of young people are taking part in anti-capitalist demonstrations. And more workers are taking strike action e.g. local government workers, railway workers, and potentially firefighters.

None of this is caused by 'socialist propaganda'. On the contrary, most people who support renationalisation, who have been on anti-capitalist demonstrations, or have been on strike would not call themselves socialists.

But an arrow tracing their political trajectory would point clearly towards the left. Broadly speaking they're moving in a socialist direction. The reason is fundamentally simple: many people don't like the way the world is at the moment.

It is their experience of the capitalist world we live in that drives people towards socialism. Ten years ago capitalism declared victory when the Soviet Union collapsed. What existed in the Soviet Union was not genuine socialism but a grotesque and dictatorial caricature of it.

Nonetheless, its failure was a golden opportunity for capitalism world-wide. However, despite all the capitalists' efforts to permanently eliminate socialist ideas they're gaining ground once again.

Abhorrent as the Stalinist system in the Soviet Union was, capitalism has shown itself incapable of offering an alternative. In the former-Soviet Union capitalism is an unmitigated disaster. The economy has collapsed by 50% and life expectancy has fallen in ten years to the same level as in the 1950s.

Brutal capitalist world

THE HUMAN suffering resulting from the reintroduction of capitalism is immense. Look up 'capitalism' in the Collins English Dictionary. It suggests you compare it with the alternative 'socialism'.

Genuine socialist ideas have been developed over centuries in the course of humanity's fight for a better life. Today they remain the only viable alternative in an increasingly unstable and brutal capitalist world.

Capitalism has created unimaginable wealth alongside unbelievable poverty. The World Summit for Sustainable Development sums it up. Millions of dollars were spent on keeping 65,000 delegates in luxury. But all the caviar in the world couldn't help the delegates agree a single target to bring electricity to the two billion people on the planet without it.

Capitalism means that 815 million people go hungry world-wide. We live on a planet where 55% of the 12 million child deaths each year are caused by malnutrition.

And it's getting worse. According to the United Nations (UN), the poorest countries are worse off now than they were 30 years ago. On current trends, the numbers living in absolute poverty - that is, on less than a dollar a day - will increase by ten million a year for the next 15 years.

The Aids epidemic has already killed 25 million people and is predicted to kill a further 68 million in the coming decades. In Botswana alone, 39% of the adult population have HIV/Aids.

Meanwhile in the US, the richest country on earth, the richest 1% have seen their incomes increase by 157% in real terms since 1979. By contrast, the bottom 20% are actually making $100 less a year in real terms, 45 million people live below the poverty line and over 40% have no medical cover.

Yet under capitalism humankind has developed science and technique to a level unimaginable for previous generations. Humanity is capable of space exploration, has mapped the human genome, can modify genes and clone animals, yet we cannot feed the world on the basis of capitalism.

Wealth and poverty

FOR MOST of human history it has not been possible to satisfy even the most basic human needs. Now, as a result of the labour and ingenuity of working people, the potential exists to eliminate want forever.

The barrier to achieving this is the capitalist system itself. Based as it is on the private ownership of the productive forces (factories, offices, science and technique), capitalism creates immense inequality and deprivation when the potential exists for providing the material components of a decent life for all.

Capitalism is driven by big business' need to make the maximum possible profits. A socialist society, by contrast, would be driven by the need to provide a decent life for all humanity, whilst protecting the environment for future generations.

Socialism has to be international. It's impossible to create socialism in one country, surrounded by a world capitalist market. Nonetheless there is an enormous amount that could be achieved by a socialist government after it came to power as part of a transition from capitalism to socialism.

A genuine socialist government would extend and deepen democracy enormously. This would be much more far-reaching than the parliamentary democracies of capitalism where we simply get to vote every few years for MPs who do what they like once elected.

Elected representatives would only receive the average wage. Nationally, regionally and locally - at every level - elected representatives would be accountable and subject to instant recall. So if the people who'd elected them did not like what their representative did, they could make them stand for immediate re-election and, if they wished, replace them with someone else.

It is often argued that socialists simply want to share out the wealth. This, it is asserted, would only mean increased misery for the rich - as the wealth would not be enough to obliterate poverty. But we are not interested in merely doing this.

Of course, it would be nice to take some of Bill Gates' $36 billion (£24 billion), but in order for socialism to work it would be necessary to do much more than that.

Some of the immediate measures that could be taken include:

1. Eliminating arms spending

The US has promised to rebuild Afghanistan after bombing it to smithereens. Yet the $297 million (£200 million) it has pledged in 2002 is equal to just seven hours of US defence spending!

Arms spending has accounted for $1 trillion a year world-wide since the end of the cold war. This alone could provide $1,000 a year for every family on the planet. Just 25% of the cost of president George W Bush's Star Wars programme would provide clean drinking water for the billion people who are currently without it.

2. Sharing out work

Even at the end of the economic boom in the late 1990s there were still 35 million unemployed in the European Union. At the same time, those in work are working longer hours than ever before. This is madness: a socialist government would immediately share out the work.

In addition, it would use modern technology to limit the number of hours it was necessary to work. A socialist government could immediately introduce a maximum 35-hour week, with no loss of pay. Capitalism's remorseless drive for profit means that new technology has been used, not to shorten the working week, but to throw workers on the scrap heap.

A socialist government would harness technology to lower the number of hours people have to work. This would give working-class people more time to participate in running society. Combined with a massive programme of socially necessary projects - such as increasing the numbers of teachers, doctors and nurses - unemployment could be eliminated.

3. Ending competition and duplication

Private ownership of the means of production results in constant duplication. Companies fiercely compete to produce a certain product first and best. Socialism would eliminate this and thereby save a huge amount of resources.

There would also be no need for marketing, on which capitalism spends $1 trillion a year. This does not mean, as is commonly claimed, that socialism would result in a lack of choice or poor-quality goods: a society where everyone dresses in a grey uniform.

It would be possible to have far more choice of the things which people desire to have a variety of (such as clothes, music, holidays etc) than under capitalism. However, society might choose not to have 200 brands of washing powder.

Real alternative

A SOCIALIST economy would have to be a democratically planned economy. This would mean bringing all the big corporations, controlling around 80% of the British economy, into democratic public ownership, under democratic working-class control.

Of course it would not mean bringing small businesses, such as local shops, many of which are forced out of business by the multinationals, into public ownership. Nor would it mean, as opponents of socialism claim, taking away personal 'private property'. On the contrary socialists are favour of everyone having the right to a decent home and the other conveniences of modern life.

The capitalists argue that a democratically planned economy could not work. Yet, in reality capitalism has provided the tools which could enormously aid the genuine, democratic planning of an economy.

We have the internet, market research, supermarket loyalty cards that record the shopping habits of every customer, and so on. Big business uses this technology to find out what it can sell. Could it not be used rationally instead to find out what people need and want?

Despite all the propaganda of big business, socialist ideas will continue to gain ground. World-wide millions of people are fighting back against the reality of capitalism. They are the Bolivian masses who rose up and prevented the privatisation of their water supply and the Argentinians who overthrew four presidents in two weeks.

They are the ten million Indian workers who took strike action against privatisation. They are the workers in Spain who held a one-day general strike against attacks on unemployment rights, and the workers in Italy who have mobilised in their millions against the right-wing government of Silvio Berlusconi.

At the same time as the poor and oppressed of entire countries are fighting back against the effects of capitalism, a minority are beginning to consciously look for an alternative system. It is this reality that ensures that socialism isn't a spent force but the wave of the future.

Hannah Sell's book, ' Socialism in the 21st Century' is available online or from Socialist Publications.  Price £5.

What Is Socialism?  Taken from The Socialist, 27 July 2001

After Genoa - what way forward?

THE BLOODY events at the G8 summit in Genoa mark a turning point in the anti-capitalist movement.

Leaders of the world's eight richest nations slept in a luxury liner and junketed on five star cuisine. They were behind a 13-feet steel barricade, topped with barbed wire.

Meanwhile outside the six square mile exclusion zone, police shot dead young protester Carlo Giuliani, and brutally attacked and injured hundreds more.

After Genoa, the G8 will hold their next summit in a remote resort in Canada's Rocky Mountains. In November the World Trade Organisation (WTO), focus of previous protests, will meet in Qatar in the Middle East.

Anti-capitalist protests

But, the representatives of global capitalism insist, they are "not running away from the anti-capitalist protests". Most people will think differently.

However far they flee, however brutal the repression meted out against peaceful protesters, anti-capitalism won't fade away.

The siege mentality of big business's spokesmen reinforces a growing sense of alienation - amongst young people in particular - from capitalism and its institutions.

When Carlo Giuliani was shot, Tony Blair rejected calls for the summit to be suspended, arguing that the politicians should carry on with their "democratic" business. But it is precisely because he and the rest preside over an undemocratic system based on inequality, injustice, environmental destruction, debt and poverty, that the anti-capitalist movement keeps growing.

In the last year, three million people have protested in 20 countries world-wide. Millions more sympathise with their aims.

In an opinion poll in Britain 67% thought big corporations have more power than governments. 76% thought they put profit before people.

Black and Asian youth in areas such as Brixton and Bradford are beginning to link the brutality and racism which they face daily at the police's hands and the vicious attacks on anti-capitalist protesters in Genoa and elsewhere.

Where is the movement headed?

Workers fighting privatisation in education and other public services are drawing the conclusion that they too are '"anti-capitalist".

After Genoa many will want to consider where the movement is headed.

At least 700 separate organisations were involved in the protests, voicing their anger and concerns on the streets.

From the beginning, the anti-capitalist movement embraced many varied groups and ideas. Differences over strategy and tactics were already emerging before Genoa.

The media focused on groups such as Drop the Debt and Oxfam which refused to participate in the Saturday demonstration of 300,000 because they feared it would be "hijacked" by "violent anarchists". But the main divisions aren't between those who support and those who reject violence.

Most protesters, while condemning police and state violence, understand that smashing up shops and property and individual acts of violence by demonstrators, don't take the movement forward and can give politicians an opportunity to increase state repression.

Better organised

Other debates are more significant. While spokespeople for the anti-capitalist movement such as journalist Naomi Klein praise its spontaneity, many involved in the protests are deciding that they need to be better organised.

While other 'leaders' argue naively for a more 'humane' form of capitalism and for reforming institutions like the IMF and World Bank, radical young people and increasingly sections of workers, look towards a more fundamental change.

Direct action and anti-capitalist protests outside the institutions of global capitalism raised millions of people's awareness of capitalism's iniquities and placed the spotlight firmly on the system as a whole.

But by themselves, these protests cannot end capitalism. Even if its representatives are forced to the far ends of the earth, they will still meet and control our lives.

Ending capitalism

Ending capitalism requires mass movements involving radicalised young people, the urban and rural poor in 'developing' countries but with workers playing the central role.

Two general strikes in Greece this year in protest at changes to the social security system brought the country to a halt.

These showed why workers are not just one 'pressure group' amongst many but the decisive force with the potential, collective power to change society.

Socialism 

With a world recession looming, the anti-capitalist protests are a foretaste of much bigger struggles to come.

We will strive to link the anti-capitalist with the workers' movement. But being anti-capitalist is not enough. We have to be clear what we're fighting for.

Socialism is about taking control away from the multinational corporations and rich elite and democratically and sustainably planning production for need not profit. The struggle for socialism is the only way forward.  

The Socialist, 27 July 2001

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Editors Note: The following extracts are taken from a Socialist Party publication written in 1994. For an account of what Socialism means today, read Socialism in the 21st Century, available to buy online or from Socialist Publications.  Price £5.

1. 'Old' Labour and Socialism

No-one seriously argues that the Labour Party today is socialist. In 1994, at the Labour Party Conference, the new Labour leader Tony Blair signalled his intent to drop Clause Four, the 'socialist clause', from the constitution. Clause Four stated that the aim of the Labour Party was:

It was printed on the back of every membership card.

"Common ownership" was taken to refer to the nationalisation of the major companies and financial institutions that control the economy, so that production can be organised to meet the needs of everyone, not to make profits for a few.

The Economist, a journal written mainly for the bosses, explained at the time:

After the collapse of the Stalinist regimes in Russia and Eastern Europe, many argued that there is no alternative to Capitalism. 

But is it the case that, unlike all other ways of organising society which preceded it, capitalism, the society we live in today, can't be replaced by a better way of meeting people's needs? Will it last forever with this or that small adjustment? Is this really the best that can be achieved by humanity?

The Socialist Party believes it is possible to achieve a decent minimum wage, full employment, good education and health services. Homelessness can be a thing of the past. We can end inequality and poverty.

That is what socialism is all about. When Labour leaders ditched socialism in order to support the market economy (just another way of saying capitalism) they abandoned any commitment to a decent minimum wage, full employment and a range of other policies. 

Today the Socialist Party campaigns for a new mass workers' party, uniting all working-class people and youth in struggle against the evils of capitalism.

(See Appendix for more on Clause Four, and Labour's debt to Marxism.)

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2. What is the market economy?

New Labour, the Tories and the wealthy support the market system or capitalism because they claim it’s the best way of meeting needs and improving production. 

Firstly they say people wouldn't buy things they didn't need, so capitalism has to produce goods people want and at a price they can be sold at. 

Secondly, competition between individual capitalists to get people to buy their goods means they have to become more efficient, develop new machines and better ways of organising production. The reason they are prepared do this is that they make profits. That profit motive is the driving force of capitalism. 

Thatcher always claimed that the market allows freedom and choice of where you live, whether you rent or own your own house, where your children go to school, where you go for health care. But all this choice ignores one small fact – the vast differences in wealth and income that exist. 

For those on low pay or benefits, there is no choice about buying your own house in the suburbs, going private for health care, helping your children through university or buying them the computers and books at home so they can improve their knowledge and do better in exams. Some old people can't even choose to have heating and lighting to keep them warm because their benefits are too low.

Many working-class people are instinctively suspicious of the profit motive. In an opinion poll in Britain 67% thought big corporations have more power than governments. 76% thought they put profit before people. There is almost universal opposition to the destruction of the health service through creeping privatisation. There is deep suspicion of the drug companies. The underlying reason for this is that if something is being done for profit, the health considerations of the patient will come second.

Already we know of drugs that are too expensive for the NHS or old people being refused operations. Although their quality of life would be improved, even if they only live for a few more years, in the warped estimation of capitalism it isn't worth the investment. They won't be working and producing profits but will be "a burden on the taxpayer".

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3. Nationalisation

In the past the Labour Party and even the capitalists themselves accepted that the market economy left to itself wasn't sufficient.

Past Labour governments nationalised public utilities like water, the railways, gas and electricity and old heavy industries like coal, steel, shipbuilding and parts of the car industry. They gave massive compensation to former owners who had presided over the decline, and in some cases complete ruin, of these sectors.

Sections of big business accepted nationalisation of these essential but loss-making industries. Even Edward Heath as Prime Minister nationalised Rolls Royce when it was about to collapse. Labour governments however invariably appointed merchant bankers, industrialists and often the former owners to run public corporations primarily to serve the needs of the private sector for cheap energy, industrial goods and services.

In spite of bureaucratic control, the pressure of the trade unions ensured that wages and conditions (especially for example health and safety in the mines) were improved in the nationalised industries. That is why workers, whilst recognising that the public sector is run by bureaucrats, are totally opposed to privatisation. The nationalised industries also ensured that services which could not be profitable but which were socially necessary, for example, postal deliveries and transport in rural areas were provided.

Because these nationalised industries were run bureaucratically for the benefit of capitalism the bosses were able to discredit them. Because decisions were taken by a bureaucracy often under the direction of the government, they were able to cut back on finances and services. In this way the Tories undermined the rail and coal industries then claimed they were inefficient because they were nationalised to justify their programme of privatisation.

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4. Investment - Capitalism’s contradictions

Gordon Brown, Labour's Treasurer, has repeatedly said that Labour would not be going back to the "tax and spend" or "borrow and spend" policies of the past. 

He refers to those governments such as in 1945 and the Wilson governments of 1964-70 which pursued a policy of intervention to nationalise or at least prop up ailing industries and of financing an expansion in the welfare state.

These governments were operating in a world where production was increasing, more wealth was being created and there was enough to make concessions to working class people. Capitalism no longer feels so confident.

The economic crisis of 1973 - 74 led the Tories, in the name of Thatcherism, to throw these ideas out. They couldn't stabilise capitalism through state intervention and it was best left to market forces.

The main economic aim of the Labour leaders is to get the capitalists to invest. In order to do this the profits and wealth of the bosses have to be left intact. So rather than pursue social justice by making them cough up the taxes they owe and pay a wealth tax, the bosses in Britain are amongst the least taxed in the industrialised countries.

Public Expenditure

At the same time the Labour Government has reduced public expenditure and are only prepared to concede a minimum wage which will not inconvenience the bosses. In other words they hope British and foreign capitalists will invest in Britain and the bait will be a workforce on poverty wages, with no rights and security.

There's absolutely nothing "new" or "modern" about this. It represents a bankrupt policy of supporting an out-dated system. One of the effects will be an extension of the humiliation of the means test and the destruction of working class communities through unemployment and poverty.

The bosses are not really short of money to invest. Even if their profits were boosted further, they would need profitable markets for their goods. But capitalism is based on exploiting working-class people, that's where the profits come from. So, although there are obviously many goods needed to raise the living standards of working-class people, it can never pay them enough to buy back all the goods produced.

Labour’s policies won't get the capitalists to invest but it will place the burden of the declining economy more and more on the shoulders of working-class people.

Boom Years

In the boom years after the Second World War, many working class people felt life was improving. Women went out to work in increasing numbers providing a second wage. 

Further and higher education offered opportunities for their children to have better jobs than they themselves had. Very few people now expect that their children's lives will be financially securer and more fulfilling than their own.

In the major capitalist countries even during the economic growth of the mid 1990’s 35 million people were without jobs and now a major recession is hitting both sides of the Atlantic. The bosses are worried about the social consequences of such high unemployment.

The capitalists often threaten that they will take their investment elsewhere if we threaten their wealth and privileges by establishing a socialist society. In those circumstances working class people of course would ensure that no machinery, equipment or other resources are removed. But in any case the capitalist system is in crisis internationally. In country after country they are confronting the opposition of the working class. That is why the Socialist Party supports the struggles of workers around the world and is part of an international organisation, the Committee for a Workers' International.

Capitalism is unable to fully utilise capacity now or new discoveries to revolutionise society. It is now a stumbling block to a potential vast improvement in people's lives. Instead of lifting the whole of society onto a new level, the introduction of information and other technology under capitalism is seen as a way of further undermining wages and conditions for working class people, throwing more onto the dole while others continue to work excessive hours. The waste of natural resources and pollution of our environment threatens not only our health but the future of the planet itself.  We need Socialism.

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5. Socialism and democracy

The socialism we are fighting for has nothing to do with the bureaucratic or 'top down' nationalisation of the past in Britain. Nor does it have anything to do with the former regimes of Eastern Europe and Russia which the Socialist Party has never called socialist. 

There, a planned economy was run by a bureaucracy who developed for themselves the lifestyles of millionaires and killed off the workers' democracy which began to develop after the Russian Revolution. Even so, because of the planned economy, production in Russia grew six and half times between 1918 and 1965. Eventually, control by the bureaucrats strangled the economy.

The bureaucrats were able to take over because of poverty and the lack of technology available to workers in what was a very backward country. The intervention of armies from eleven countries laid waste the country. The workers needed the assistance of revolutions in countries where the working class was stronger and technique more developed.

To listen to the Labour leaders and the capitalists, you would think that capitalism is democratic. Due to past battles by working-class people you can cast your vote every five years for a government. But the decisions which lead to thousands of redundancies or to build motorways instead of railways or to evict thousands from their homes are made in the boardrooms of private industry and the finance companies, where working class people have no say. The only recourse you have is to strike and protest, what they call "the politics of confrontation", and they'd even like to take those rights away from us.

Planning does not have to be done bureaucratically. The socialism we are fighting for would establish a planned economy through workers struggle, bringing the economy under workers' control and management.

Socialist Party members are always available to discuss any questions you may have about these pamphlets. Why not contact us, or email us for an informal discussion, or ring the Socialist Party on 020 8988 8777