Fellow Working Men and Women,
The message of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, which I
am representing in this General Election, is fundamentally the same as in every
other election in the past. While capitalism lasts Socialists have only one
task; to explain, and struggle for, Socialism.
THE SOCIALIST PARTY
The Socialist Party of Great Britain was founded in 1904.
Our object is the establishment of Socialism; a world-wide social system in
which the means of wealth production and distribution (factories, mines, the
land, railways, steamships, etc.) will be owned by the entire population of the
world.
We are associated with our Companion Socialist parties in
the U.S.A., Canada, Ireland, New Zealand and Australia. We have no connection
whatever with any other political party or organisation.
We oppose every organisation which stands foi capitalism,
which includes the Labour, Conservative, Liberal, Communist, Independent Labour
parties and many others. We oppose the wars which capitalism persistently
throws up. We oppose political campaigns which appeal for votes on programmes
of reforms (better housing, higher wages, etc.), which in fact do little or
nothing to alleviate working class problems. We oppose Nationalisation, which
is just another way of organising capitalism.
We support Socialism. Nothing less will do.
We work for Socialism. We spread among the working class the
knowledge without which Socialism cannot be established. Our leader does not
exist. Leaders are for the politically ignorant. The worker who has Socialist
knowledge aoes not need a leader to interpret political affairs for him and to
tell him what to do. There are, therefore, no leaders in the Socialist Party of
Great Britain and we do not set out to become leaders of the working class.
We recruit Socialists and nobody else. We examine all
applicants for membership to ensure that they understand what is entailed by
being a Socialist.
We appeal to the working class to examine the case for
Socialism and to vote for our candidate only if they understand, and want,
Socialism.
We recognise that the road to Socialism lies through
Parliament. At the moment, the number of Socialists is small and our resources
are therefore limited; unfortunately, we can afford to run only a few
candidates. But as the conscious desire for Socialism spreads among the working
class we shall contest more and more constituencies, giving more and more
workers the chance to vote for a world of abundance, peace and freedom.
THIS IS CAPITALISM
We live today in a social system which is called capitalism.
The basis of this system is the ownership by a section of the population of the
means of producing and distributing wealth—of factories, mines, ships, and so
on. It follows from this that all the wealth which we produce today is turned
out with the intention of realising a profit for the owning class. It is from
this basis that the problems of modern society spring.
The class which does not own the means of wealth
production—the working class—are condemned to a life of degradation and
dependence upon their wages. This poverty expresses itself in inferior housing,
clothes, education, and the like. In the end, it expresses itself in the
pathetic destitution of the old age pensioner—a fate which no elderly
capitalist ever faces. Implicit in capitalism is the class struggle between
capitalist and worker.
The basis of capitalism throws up the continual battle over
wages and working conditions with attendant industrial disputes. It gives rise,
with its international economic rivalries, to the wars which have disfigured
man’s recent history.
Every other party in this election stands for capitalism,
whatever they may call themselves. And whatever their protestations, they stand
for a world of poverty, hunger, unrest and war. They stand for a world in which
no human being is secure.
WHAT IS SOCIALISM?
Socialism will be a social system based upon the common
ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and
distributing wealth, by and in the interest of the whole community. This definition
was composed by the Socialist Party of Great Britain when it was formed in
1904. We have never altered it; not because we are stubborn and blind to
changing conditions but because the word Socialism means the same today as it
did in 1904—and as it will mean when Socialism becomes a reality.
Common ownership of the means of wealth pro-; duction and
distribution means that the things, which are needed to make and distribute
wealth will be1 owned by the whole human race. At present these things are the
land, factories, mines, railways, steamships, etc. But common ownership tines
not mean that everybody in the world will own an equal share of every factory,
mine, railway train and the rest.
What common ownership does mean, is that there is one way in
which all human beings will be equal. Everybody will have an equal right to
take however! much wealth they need and to consume it as they require. Because
the means of production will be commonly owned the things which are produced
will go into a common pool from which all human! beings will be able to satisfy
their needs.
Now if there is unrestricted access to wealth for, everybody
it must follow that nobody, in a sense ora an individual or a class, owns
wealth. This means; that wealth will not be exchanged mulei Socialism;! it will
not be bartered nor will it be bought and sold! As a rough parallel we can
consider the air we breathe. Everybody has free access to the air and we can
all take in as much of it as we need to live. In other words, nobody owns the air;
nobody tries to exchange air for anything else, nobody tries to sell or buy it.
Similarly there will be no buying and selling under Socialism; no need for the
complicated and widespread organisations which deal in commerce and banking in
capitalist society. Socialism will have no merchant houses, no banks, no stock
exchanges, no tax inspectors, or any of the paraphernalia of capitalism.
In a Socialist society wealth will be produced solely to
satisfy peoples’ needs and not I'm sale as it is today. Because of this there
will be no deliberate variations in quality of wealth. Socialism will have only
one quality. Whatever is produced will be the best that human beings are
capable of. Houses, for example, will be designed and built with the only motive
of housing human beings in the best possible style. The materials of which they
are made, their facilities and location will all conform to this. They will be
the best homes that society knows how to build.
Nobody will be employed by another person- nobody will sell
his labour power or work for wages. Everybody, in fact, will work for the whole
of society, Work will be a cooperative effort, freely given because men will
realise that wealth can only be produced by working unless wealth is produced society
will die. Yet it will not only be a reluctance to commit social suicide that
will keep us working under Socialism. Men will be free, free from the fetters
of wage slavery, free from the fears of unemployment, free from economic
servitude and insecurity. Nobody will he found doing a job which he hates but
tolerates because it pays him well. Healthy young men will not grow pigeon chested
over fusty ledgers. Nobody will waste his time learning how to kill scientifically.
We will be free to do useful work, making things which will add to society’s
welfare, things which will make human life belter and happier
There will be no war; the cause of war will no longer exist.
This means that there will be no armed forces with their dreadfully destructive
weapons It. means that the people who are in the armed forces, together with
the rest of the enormous social effort which is channelled into them, will he
able to serve useful, humane purposes instead of destroying and terrorising.
When production is only for human use We shall see a great
development of society's productivity. First of all, an enormous number of jobs
which are vital to capitalism will become redundant. Socialism will have no use
for such jobs because its wealth will not be produced for sale. There will probably
be statisticians to collect information about society’s productive resources
and to relate this to our needs. A lot of people will work at transporting wealth
all over the world. These are useful occupations, just as all work will be .
Capitalism has veined the worId with frontiers and has
fostered patriotism and race hatred none of which has any scientific basis.
Frontiers are purely artificial and are often altered at international conferences.
Many workers are proud of their nationality although in logic they cannot take
pride in something over which they have no control. Socialism will have none of
this. No frontiers, no racial barriers or prejudices. The world will be one
with only human beings working together for their mutual benefit.
Socialism will end the wasteful insecure world we know today.
It will remove poverty and replace it with plenty. It will abolish war and
bring us a world of peace. It will end fear and hatred and give us security and
brotherhood.
Now what about the other political parties?
PROMISES! PROMISES!
PROMISES!
A few months ago, Mr Harold Wilson told us that nineteen-sixty-six
was going to be “Make or Break” year.
This was nothing more than another way of making a promise
which we have heard many times before; that if we all work harder, cut out
restrictive practices, increase our productivity, go easy on wage claims, a
Golden Future of prosperity will be ours.
Although this is a very old promise, it has never been
fulfilled. However hard the working class work, they never get rid of their
problems, they never get any nearer the Golden Future.
The reason for this is simple. Working class problems are
caused by the capitalist social system and until that is abolished the problems
will remain.
Mr. Wilson's government were not, however, concerned with
solving! the problems of the working class. They devoted a lot of effort to
battling with their difficulties over the balance of payments, the
international standing of sterling and so on. These are all matters which
concern only the British capitalist class.
The difficulties which faced the Wilson government were not
peculiar to this country. Take wages. In France, Germany, Sweden, Australia,
the United States—to name only a few—unions are at loggerheads with governments
and employers over wage claims.
Similarly, employers in these countries are trying to
increase the productivity—in other words the intensity of exploitation—of their
workers and to make their products more competitive on the world’s markets.
They, too, have been telling their workers that this is a
time of “make or break”.
What about the problems of those workers? They are not
confined to any one country. All over the world millions of workers suffer bad
housing, inadequate medical attention, poor food. They live sub-standard lives,
catch diseases they could avoid, die before they need.
All their lives, in every land, workers face the strains of
poverty—of struggling to live within the restrictions of their wage packet, of
having always to leave a mass of needs and desires unfulfilled.
As much as poverty, war is a condition of our lives under
capitalism. In between the massive World Wars, minor conflicts are raging,
perhaps setting the scene for a greater clash. At present it is Vietnam. Not so
long ago it was Kashmir, Algeria, Suez, Korea.
There seems to be no end to it—nor can there be, as long as
capitalism lasts. For behind the military conflicts the economic rivalries of
capitalism, which are the basic cause of modern war, are as acute as ever. The
world is still divided into spheres of influence and “protection”, there are
still great power blocs confronting each other, the nations of the world still
hold mighty arsenals of frightening power.
Capitalism, in short, creates a mass of problems for its
people. It restricts, represses, degrades and destroys them. For many people,
life under capitalism is made tolerable only by their faith in the politicians’
promises of a Golden Future.
Yet however much the politicians assure us that they have
the solution to our problems, they never succeed in solving them. The future,
as long as the workers are content to trust their leaders, and to keep
capitalism in being, is grim.
The expansion of Socialist knowledge and action is the only
hope for a sane world, a world which is safe and abundant and free.
WHAT THEY DO
Why do the various political parties keep breaking their
election promises? The Labour Party and the Conservative Party accuse each
other of incompetence and trickery and the Liberal Party blames them both. But
these are all superficial explanations. I he real reason is more basic: the
Government is not the free agent when it comes to tackling social problems that
the manifestos, slogans and promises of these parties suggest.
All these parties aim to take power within the framework of
capitalism and through legislation to solve the many social problems of the
day. The function of a government is to manage the day-lo- day affairs of
capitalism so that it is the needs of capitalism rather than election promises
or abstract moral principles that determine how it acts. By its very nature
capitalism cannot be made to work to the benefit of the immense majority of its
people, those who work for a wage or salary. Any party, whatever its
intentions, which takes on the task of running the governmental affairs of
capitalism is sooner or later forced to act to the detriment of the working
class. Time and time again this has been confirmed. The Labour government has
been no exception as its record on wages and salaries, war and immigration
shows.
When the Labour government took office its first problem was
to deal with the financial mess that British capitalism had got itself into.
This took priority. “We shall have to defer some of the desirable social
reforms we had hoped to do in the immediate future,’ said Callaghan last July.
The government did all it could to keep down wages and salaries so that more
profits would be available for re-investment. In fact in this it has had little
success. The economic forces of capitalism have made a mockery of the Prices
and Incomes policy and the first year of the so-called National Plan.
In Aden and Malaysia the Labour government is involved in
wars to protect the oil, tin, and rubber supplies of the owning class of
Britain. In Vietnam it has given its support to the American government’s
policy of killing and destruction there. Again, as any government in capitalism
must, it has had a ‘defence” policy based on the latest weapons of destruction,
including nuclear weapons. It has even appointed an arms super-salesman.
The Labour Party has always talked of standing for human
brotherhood. Yet the present government has pursued a thinly-disguised policy
of colour discrimination. In August last year immigration controls were
tightened and vague talk of “illegal immigrants” by the then Home Secretary has
no doubt helped to fan racial prejudice.
Once again the Labour Party has failed to tame capitalism.
Indeed over the years the opposite has happened: Capitalism has tamed the
Labour Party. It is now openly and obviously little different, in words as well
as actions, from the Conservative and Liberal parties which don’t claim to be
against capitalism.
Governments of all parties fail not through incompetence or
insincerity or sabotage. They fail because they cannot do what they claim. They
are elected by cruelly exploiting people’s hopes of a better world and then
find they can’t deliver the goods.
Now we come to the important point—what about you, the
voter?
HOW YOU LIVE TODAY
Capitalism is essentially a system of inequality; it can be
nothing else, and all the claptrap of its Lab/' Lib/Cons politicians cannot
alter that unpleasant fact. The Board of Inland Revenue has recently issued its
annual report for the financial year 1963- 64, showing that over ten million
people earned £500 or less, before tax, while at the other end of the scale,
110 enjoyed a pre-tax income of £100,000 or more. An interpretation of the
Board’s report by “The Economist” for February 26 says that “two thirds of
British people in 1964 had no' wealth worth recording at all, while eighty per
cent, of all personal wealth, including property, was owned by some five
million individuals, nine per cent, of the population.
It is this division of wealth—this glaring inequality —which
is a constant feature of capitalism. It is moreover a fundamental fact of
capitalist life and colours the whole of your existence, so that by comparison
the promises of the Heaths and Wilsons amount to so much trivia. Not that
Wilson or Heath will tell you that, of course. All their attention will be
directed to securing your vote for the continuation of a world where your life
and that of many others, will be devoted to keeping the nine per cent, minority
in the ease and comfort of their eighty per cent, stake.
If you think that’s a bit far-fetched, take a look at some
of the issues which will be tossed back and forth this time. Have the
politicians made yet another promise to solve the housing problem? Yes, we
thought they had—the same promise they make in all elections. But just who is
it who will be queueing for council “dwellings” or worried about mortgage
rates? For whom, in fact, is housing a problem? Certainly not the nine per
cent.
The question of education has threatened to become a major
issue and “grammar versus comprehensive” has been debated angrily by worried
working class parents. Understandably enough, but whatever emerges from the
melting pot, real education for your children will not be part of it. There
will be a training of some sort or other for the jobs which will be going in
the capitalist world of the 1970’s, and that in general is what the kids will
get—except for the lucky few whose parents belong to the nine per-cent, and can
afford something very much better.
And do the nine per cent, have to worry about higih prices,
lagging wages and pensions? Of course not, but you do, and it’s because you
don’t look further into the background of these problems that politicians can
keep you stocked with promises, and that’s about all. Your vote can be used to
do something really positive about all this, but only when it is backed with
determination which stems from knowledge of the world in which you live.
THINK. FOR YOURSELF
Apart from the Socialist Party, all other parties will be
seeking support for a political leader. The fact that the Socialist Party
emphatically rejects the cult of leadership is another basic difference between
ourselves and all other parties. To us, political leadership symbolises
immaturity; it is inherently corrupt. By supporting political leadership in
this election, the working class will relinquish yet again the power they can
have to act in their own interests.
Over the years, politics has given us a procession of
various leaders and a great deal of attention has been given to their various personal
qualities, but the electorate has a fickle appetite for the men it consumes.
The magic Macwonder image can easily give way to something outworn and flabby.
It is convenient under Capitalism to associate individual personalities with
various phases of its administration. It is convenient to be able to associate
failure with a man instead of a system. It is convenient to be able to swap the
man but keep the system, to create the illusion of fresh opportunities by introducing
a new personality. Political leaders come and go, but the institutions they
administer remain. We do not attack one leader as against another. We argue
that no man, or for that matter no team of men, can administer Capitalism in
the interests of the whole community.
The political leaders in this election claim that they can
work on behalf of the majority. By now the cheap electoral promises that
crumble in the hard test of actual policies and subsequent experience is more
than familiar. As ever, this process will repeat itself in this election. Regardless
of the endless auctioneering that lakes place between
parties seeking to form a government, the stark facts of Capitalist society
must assert themselves. We live in class divided society that operates in the
interests of a privileged minority. Regardless of intentions, Capitalism
can only be run in their interests. There can be no choice. The defence of
interests, that are hostile to the working population must go with the job of
government.
The administration of a society that is based on privileged
interests requires the cult of political leadership. Workers who accept economic
exploitation will abdicate their political interests by supporting a leader.
Socialists have a knowledge of Capitalism that enables them to know where their
interests lie. For us leadership is an irrelevance. We combine in a democratic
way with the object of realising our mutual interests through the establishment
of Socialism. Action for fundamental social change is beyond individuals This
must be the act of a majority who assert democratic control over their social
affairs through knowledge and understanding. For us leadership and the confused
support that it rests upon walks a political path fraught with disaster.
In this election, the Socialist Party of Great Britain does
not seek your blind support on the basis of empty promises which are easy to
mouth and cheap to print but, which, having no prospect of success, are in
reality deceptive We do not offer you a leader with an allegedly magic touch.
We do not ask for your vote unless you understand our case.
There is no easy way out. We ask you to put in socialist
perspective the realities of everyday life.
We seek to spread knowledge of Socialism and secure your
understanding. When we have that we shall ask you for more than your vote; we
shall ask for your comradely help in establishing Socialism.
I urge you seriously to consider our case, for the issues
before you at this Election are vital. Upon your knowledge, and your action, depends
the hope for the future.
Yours for Socialism
HARRY BALDWIN
Socialist Party of Gt. Britain
OBJECT
The establishment of a system of society based upon the
common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for
producing and distributing wealth by and in the interest of the whole
community.
DECLARATION OF PRINCIPLES
The SOCIALIST PARTY OF GREAT BRITAIN holds:
1] That
Society as at present constituted is based upon the ownership of the means of
living (i.e., land, factories, railways, etc.) by the capitalist or master
class, and the consequent enslavement of the working class by whose labour
alone wealth is produced.
2] That in
society, therefore, there is an antagonism of interests, manifesting itself as
a class struggle, between those who possess but do not produce, and those who
produce but do not possess.
3] That
this antagonism can be abolished only by the emancipation of the working class
from the domination of the master class, by the conversion into the common
property of society of the means of production and distribution, and their
democratic control by the whole people.
4] That as
in the order of social evolution the working class is tire last class to
achieve its freedom the emancipation of the working class will involve the
emancipation of all mankind without distinction of race or sex.
5] That
this emancipation must be the work of the working class itself.
6] That as
the machinery of government, including the armed forces of the nation, exists
only to conserve the monopoly by the capitalist class of the wealth taken from
the workers, the working class must organise consciously and politically for
the conquest of the powers of government, national and local, in order that
this machinery, including these forces, may be converted from an instrument of
oppression into the agent of emancipation and the overthrow of privilege,
aristocratic and plutocratic.
7] That as
all political parties are but the expression of class interests, and as the
interest of the working class is diametrically opposed to the interests of all
sections of the master class, the party seeking working- class emancipation
must be hostile to every other party.
8] The
SOCIALIST PARTY OF GREAT BRITAIN, therefore, enters the field of political
action determined to wage war against all other political parties, whether
alleged labour of avowedly capitalist, and calls upon the members of the
working class of this country to muster under its banner to the end that a
speedy termination may be wrought to the system which deprives them of the
fruits of their labour, and that poverty may give place to comfort, privilege
to equality, and slavery to freedom.
Harry Baldwin
Socialist Party of Gt Britain candidate for Hampstead
Harry Baldwin, the Socialist Party candidate, stands for
Socialism
Parliamentary General Election, Thursday 31st March 1966
