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Jun2004 Final.Qxd Contents Centenary Event London, Saturday 12 June and Editorial 4 Sunday 13 June 6 50 years ago Saturday 12 June Regents College, Regents Park, NW1 Inaugural meeting 7 (nearest tube: Baker St) The “university of the 9 working class” Introductory course in 11 socialist theory Mastering Marxian economics 12 On the stump 16 6pm WHY SOCIALISM IS A brush with the fascists 19 STILL RELEVANT Speakers: Richard Donnelly and Bill Free thinking logic 22 Martin Chair: Pat Deutz Northern Ireland: our first 24 election campaign 7.30 - 12pm Social Evening, Buffet, Music Smash cash 26 Details and Tickets from: Centenary Committee, 52 Clapham High St, SW4 7UN Socialism on one planet 28 Long live the (electronic) 30 Sunday 13 June revolution! 11pm Guided walking tour (2 hours) As others have seen us 32 of Clerkenwell and Holborn area of places associated with the Socialist Party and the working class Movement or monument? 37 movement in general. Meet at Farringdon station (rail and tube). Getting splinters 38 Guide: Keith Scholey. 3pm (till dark) Socialist Party rally at Some internal debates 42 Speakers Corner, Hyde Park (tube: Marble Arch). As soon as this pub closes 46 Socialist Standard June 2004 3 A century for socialism elcome to this special edition of the Socialist One hundred years ago the men and women who Standard, a commemorative issue marking one founded the Socialist Party came to a significant political Whundred years in the political life of the conclusion, which is just as important now as it was then. Socialist Party of Great Britain. When our Party was This was that capitalism, through creating an inter- formed on 12th June 1904, in a hall in a little alley off connected world-wide division of labour and unparalleled Fetter Lane, Fleet Street, London, the founder members leaps in productivity (whereby ten years in its lifespan is would rightly have viewed the possibility of our existence equal to one hundred years and more of previous systems a century later in something of a negative light. The aim of like feudalism), has created the conditions of potential the Socialist Party has always been ‘socialism and nothing abundance necessary for its own replacement and also a but’ and the founder members conceived the Party as a social class of wage and salary earners with the incentive mechanism through which socialist ideas could be rapidly to organise for this. What pioneers of the socialist spread and, potentially, through which the working class of movement like Marx, Engels and Morris envisaged as wage and salary earners could come to political power. socialism or communism, had become a practical The subsequent creation of socialism would render the possibility and tinkering with an inherently defective need for a socialist party redundant and so, one hundred system like capitalism a waste of time and energy in the years on, the very continued existence of the Socialist light of it. Party of Great Britain is indicative of the fact that the The founders of the Socialist Party recognised that the system of society the founder members were dedicated to time was ripe for the working class to organise itself overthrowing – capitalism – is still with us. consciously and politically to democratically take control To this effect, today, ownership of the means of living of the state machine in countries across the world, (the factories, farms, offices, communication systems and dispossessing the owning class of capitalists and socialising so on) is still in the hands of a minority social class that production on an international basis. In doing so the can live a luxurious existence without having to work. working class would consciously create a system where Virtually all the useful work in society is being done by the human activity would be carried out solely and directly to majority, a class of people forced by economic compulsion meet the needs and desires of the population, and where to sell their working energies for a wage or a salary that all the defining categories of capitalism had been abolished: is less in value than what they produce. It is a society production for profit, money, national frontiers, the class characterised by extremes of wealth and poverty, by wars system and – as a result – the enforcer of class society and chaos and by a meanness of spirit that undermines itself, the state. much that is decent about human beings. For the last hundred years the Socialist Party has been Reformism waging a war of our own – against capitalism and for At the time of our Party’s foundation other political socialism. We have waged a war too against all the political activists agreed that this type of society was possible and parties who have supported capitalism, including those desirable, but disagreed about how it could be created. that have done so while paying lip-service to socialism. The Due to what they took to be the backward intellectual achievement of socialism has been our sole objective, development of the working class, they thought that because our understanding of capitalist society and its capitalism would need to be gradually transformed into working has told us that it is a system capable of change socialism by a series of reform measures. They labelled the over time but not change that can abolish its fundamental founder members of the Socialist Party and others who defects. Capitalism has altered over the last century, but thought on similar lines ‘impossibilists’, people who were not fundamentally so and all the problems associated with demanding the impossible when piecemeal and gradual it in 1904 are still present today, with some new and reform was all that was realistic. This was the substance of unforeseen ones too. our break in 1904 with our parent body, the Social Democratic Federation, and the basis for our criticism of Technological powers other organisations of the time like the Independent In one sense, capitalism is the most successful social Labour Party and the Fabian Society. system that has ever existed in that the working class, Organisations like the SDF that had a paper through its collective efforts, has been able to develop the commitment to socialism were in practice swamped by powers of production to previously undreamed-of heights, people who were attracted by their reform programmes from putting a man on the moon to mapping the human rather than their supposed commitment to abolishing genome. But these powers of production are wasted and capitalism. In these circumstances, those who viewed distorted by a system that puts profit before needs as a reforms as a stepping-stone to socialism were themselves matter of course and where collective effort is swamped by people for whom reforms were simply an destabilised by competition and division. A society that can end in themselves, palliating the worst excesses of the now send spaceships to Mars but which cannot adequately system. The history of the Labour Party – formed out of feed, clothe and house the world’s population despite the the Labour Representation Committee in 1906 – is a case massive technological resources at its disposal is a society in point. More than any other organisation in Britain, the that is seriously and fundamentally flawed. Labour Party developed as a body hoping to reform 4 Socialist Standard June 2004 capitalism into something vaguely humane. Today, in 2004, vanguardism – succeeded in derailing the socialist project the modern Labour Party stands as an organisation which so spectacularly, but pride because of the part we have has instead been turned by capitalism into something played in keeping the alternative vision alive. rather more than vaguely inhumane. From Keir Hardie and The political positions of the Socialist Party were not Ramsay MacDonald onwards it has steadily drifted handed down on tablets of stone in 1904. With the Object towards where it is today – a party which has abandoned and Declaration of Principles as our guide we have any hope of seriously changing society for the better but developed our own analysis and political viewpoints as the which now markets itself as the most efficient managerial last hundred years have worn on. Occasionally we may team for British Capitalism PLC instead. have made mistakes, but we are confident that our record Over decades, millions of workers the world over have over the last century stands for itself – of propagating the invested their hopes in so-called ‘practical’, ‘possibilist’ case for real socialism, in exposing the promises and organisations like the Labour Party, hoping against hope trickery of the reformists and the vanguardists, in that they would be able to neuter the market economy opposing the senseless butchery of the working class in when, in reality, the market economy has successfully two world wars and countless others, and in presenting a neutered them. As such, the damage these organisations clear analysis of capitalism in language readily- have done the socialist movement is colossal. That they understandable to those whose interest lies in socialism. turned out to be the real ‘impossibilists’ – demanding an In the pages of this special issue you will read about the unattainable humanised capitalism – is one of the greatest remarkable men and women who have been members of tragedies of the last century, made all the greater because our Party over the last hundred years and about the it was so utterly predictable. political input they have had to make. Without doubt, their contribution has been an immense one and we pay public Vanguard politics tribute to them for it, but there is a lot more work still to Unfortunately for the socialist movement, the reformist be done. distraction has not been the only one, however.
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