The socialist argument is that people are far more likely to do what they want to do, and what they are best able to do, if the reward for everything is roughly the same than if a fortunate minority are beckoned to a specific set of skills by huge rewards. ibid.
The subjection of human beings by the organisation of productive labour has increased a hundredfold since Engels wrote that passage. The greater the exploitation, the more miserable the lot of so many workers, and the greater the case for socialism. The worst crime of capitalism is its enslavement and corruption of the human spirit. It binds that spirit to the yoke of productive labour, lobs it back and forth between boom and slump, insults and degrades it as if it were no more than part of the machinery. ‘We are,’ says the Guatemalan peasant in the film El Norte, ‘just arms and legs for them.’ ibid.
Russia was not a socialist society at all. It was a state-capitalist society presided over by a tyranny every bit as savage as any stock exchange-based capitalist tyranny anywhere else in the world. ibid. ch2
Socialism means that the means of production are owned and controlled by society so that what is produced can be shared out according to people’s needs. Socialism is founded on the idea of equality, which means that most people will get the same.
The basic objections to such a system have been the same ever since it was first conceived, and the arguments against them are still very much the same too.
Human nature, it is said, is fundamentally opposed to such a system, since human nature is selfish and greedy. In the end the ‘old Adam’ will out, and will wreck any egalitarian system.
Poor ‘old Adam’ is always hauled out to justify the horrors of capitalism. Two hundred years of exploitation don’t sound so bad if you can put it down to human nature. In fact, however, people’s natures are not at all like those of speculators in the City of London. Indeed it is hard, even in the City of London, to come across people whose natures are dominated entirely by greed, selfishness and a hatred of the rest of the human race. There are at least as many examples in everyday life of generosity and self-sacrifice as there are of selfishness and greed. ibid. ch5
Both experiments have called themselves socialist (though neither Communist nor Labour parties are inclined to use the word any more). Both have made a mockery of the planned economy and a sick joke of equality. The reason is simple. In both cases ‘socialism’ was attained or attempted without the involvement of the exploited class. The soul of socialism, the self-emancipation of the working class and the democratic control of society from below, was missing. What masqueraded as socialism was either state capitalism, or ‘reforms’ which left capitalism intact, if not stronger. ibid. ch5
The theme of this book is that fire down below. If society is to change in a socialist direction and if capitalism is to be replaced by socialism, the source of that change must be the fight against the exploitative society by the exploited people themselves. To knuckle down to the notion that changes can only come from the top is to accept the most debilitating and arrogant of all capitalist arguments: namely that there is at all times in human history a God-given elite, a few who are equipped to rule, while most people are not capable of government or politics and should count themselves lucky to have the occasional chance to choose which section of the elite should govern them.
This assumption of the rights of the few and the ignorance and inefficiency of the many is the hallmark of class rule through all our history. The reformer who believes that an educated elite in a parliament can change things for the masses, can – in the words of the Labour Party’s famous Clause Four – ‘secure for the workers ... the full fruits of their industry’, is really playing the same game and making the same assumptions as the most bigoted class warrior. Both believe that whatever is right and wrong for most people can only be determined by the enlightened few. ibid. ch6
Revolution? Is that not a distant and even a ridiculous idea in the last decade of the 20th century? Is it not something which happened 200 years ago in France and 70 years ago in Russia, but is hardly even thinkable today?
The answer is that there have been as many revolutionary situations in the past twenty-five years as in any other quarter century in history. In France in 1968, for instance, there was a students’ revolt and a general strike which for an instant threatened one of the most powerful and complacent ruling classes in the world. In 1974 there was a revolution in Portugal. In 1979 there was a revolution in Iran. In 1981, as we have seen, the workers of Poland came within a whisker of bringing down the regime. In all these four cases, the whole structure of class power was in jeopardy. In each case, a new system of society, a socialist system, was made possible by the revolutionary actions of the masses.
In each case the masses were defeated. The revolutionary wave subsided, and society slid back into reaction. There was nothing inevitable about this. What was missing in all four upheavals was a strong organisation of socialists linked to the fighting spirit of the working class. ibid. ch6
Socialism is, and must always be, a revolutionary idea. Unless it means the transfer of economic power from a small, greedy and irresponsible elite to the democratic control of the majority it means nothing. Since this transfer will not willingly be conceded, it can take place only in a revolution. So socialists must be revolutionaries. They have to organise themselves and direct their propaganda in the only area where there is any real prospect of change: among the minority who are prepared to fight. Their success is measured not by their ideological purity, still less by their propensity to rant and hector, but by their ability to organise and encourage people who do not share all their ideas but who are ready to fight.
This minority may change from year to year, week to week. The dynamics of class society are always throwing up new struggles, usually in unexpected areas, where people who imagined themselves law-abiding and decent citizens suddenly find themselves indignantly fighting against the rulers they previously respected. The presence and organisation of socialists in such circumstances can be crucial to victory or defeat. The chief job of socialists is to spread and link the struggles across the boundaries of race, sex, religion and nation ...
Socialism means nothing unless it means control of society from below. There is no hope of achieving that socialism except by action from below. For most of the twentieth century the idea of socialism has been poisoned by people who pretend that it can be instituted from on high: by well-meaning parliamentarians or by blind or brutal Stalinists. Now the Labour parliamentarians, in their rush for votes, are rapidly abandoning the word ‘socialism’ – the idea itself they abandoned long ago. Stalinism is dead. The ‘growing wrath’ against a system which has brought the world to the rim of hell is everywhere: in furious strikes in South Korea, in courageous uprisings of the oppressed Palestinians in the Middle East, in a new impatient fury at the wrecking of the world’s environment, in anti-poll tax demonstrations all over Britain.
There has never been a time when socialism – real socialism, socialism from below, socialism whose main ingredient is democracy, socialism won by fighting against capitalism – is more relevant. There is a world to win, and it is time for socialists to shake off their inhibitions, and go out to organise where it can be won. ibid. ch6
Only the working masses can change society; but they will not do that spontaneously, on their own. They can rock capitalism back onto its heels but they will only knock it out if they have the organisation, the socialist party, which can show the way to a new, socialist order of society. Such a party does not just emerge. It can only be built out of the day-to-day struggles of working people. Paul Foot, article ‘Why You Should Be a Socialist’
Socialism, in other words is an extension of what democracy we have, not the removal of it. Paul Foot, article January 1982, ‘3 Letters to a Bennite’
In the end, it comes to this. You still see the main hope for change in an elected Labour government, backed by supporters in the rank and file, passing and enforcing laws to establish a socialist order. I see the only real prospect for change in a growing movement from below, culminating in a revolutionary process, where so many working people are confident of their own ability to run society that they seize hold of economic and industrial power, and use it. ibid.
The very earliest groups of working people in Britain who met together to oppose emerging capitalism called themselves Corresponding Societies, combinations, associations, all words which highlighted the joining together of people in common cause against their oppressors.
Nothing could be more obvious than that the strength and power of class society requires an equivalent strength and power to change it, and that on our side that strength and power depends upon socialists joining together and acting in common purpose. Paul Foot, article July 1989, ‘The Question Lingers On’
Central to the idea of socialism is understanding that things will change – one day the people at the top who are now doing the bashing will be bashed by people at the bottom. I am greatly helped by the fact that I lived through the 1970s when we believed revolution was imminent.
When I joined Socialist Worker in October 1972 I was confident that a revolution was coming. Events seemed to confirm it, and even right wingers said the same. If you have lived through that, it is easier to see it happening again. Everything in our history points to the fact that things will swing around, and all kinds of hopes and optimisms flourish again. Although the 1990s were depressing in some respects, not a single thing has happened to make me doubt that things will change in our direction. It will happen very unexpectedly and catch us by surprise, so we must be prepared, be bigger and win more influence inside the working class. Paul Foot, article ‘Tribune of the People’
Social democracy, in short, is its own grave-digger, and the pit is now deep and black. It is worth dwelling at length on the careers of illusionists like Herbert Morrison if only to harden our resolve to build socialism on the rocks of workplace organisation and direct action which Morrison so detested. Paul Foot, article ‘Portrait of an Appalling Man’
Almost everywhere, however, that excitement is muted by a feeling of unease at the price Labour has paid to achieve this winning position. This unease is not confined to the increasing band of socialists who have been flung out of the Labour Party; nor to the hundreds of Labour Party socialists who have signed the open letter denouncing Labour’s retreats. Almost any socialist must be worried by the grim, determined effort of the leadership to wipe every vestige of socialism from the party’s programme. A former commitment to get rid of nuclear weapons, which were ostensibly there to deter an enemy, has been replaced by an almost maniacal determination to keep those weapons when there is no enemy to deter. Former commitments to repeal all anti-trade union laws and to take back into public ownership the monopolies Thatcher privatised have been replaced by half-promises to restore some union privileges, and to buy 2 percent in British Telecom (provided the Tories don’t sell off another batch, as they plan to do).