[alanjjohnstone]

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some relevance to the other thread on the need to win control of political power.

All practical politics has a relevance to that thread.Bookchin's contribution has, if not directly but indirecty, been raised. I mentioned the Town Hall-style democracy he advocates. And the importance of "dual power" has been discussed, if the actual term has not been used…the where when and how of workers councils etc.. On co-ops Gnome , i agree with you. Their inherent weaknesses are being ignored by those folk who think themselves "progressives" and hopefully you can ask at the forthcoming talk  Andrew Kliman for his criticisms of Richard Wolff's Worker Self Directed Enterprises and Gar Alperovitz's pluralist commonwealth that radica reformists have gleefully embraced. 

[alanjjohnstone]

First it was typhoid, now it's burning to death…Are you now insisting that the FBU and those inspectors that enforce the fire regulations and ensure they are not flouted, as they often are, are part of the State? They still have their respective jobs to attend to as the rovolutionary process unfolds. Those fire regulations (which begins at the point of production in the manufacturing standards) aren't going to be the first thing ip in flames. They'll still exist…and the people that ensure compliance don't all of a sudden disappear. The authority of the State is replaced by the authority of common-sense. I'm sorry but aren't we ignoring a vital part of the revolution…that it is being made voluntarily by people…most of the people…who are now more socially aware with a rise socialist consciousness and have now chosen to become more socially active, and have begun to work alongside co-workers and the wider community not only to achieve a new society but, more importantly, to implement it. That presupposes an active population taking control of their lives, especially, at work…and it means that sewage workers, civil engineering departments at town councils and all tthose involved in town planning are no longer passive spectators, merely taking orders or separated by status of the job-title. They become proactive in remodelling and restructuring first their place of work and then their profession/industry, molding it. Is this something that will only begin after the Revolution or will it be something men and women will be thinking about and planning in advance , as socialism becomes stronger. I recall Lucas Aerospace way back in the 70s looked at their technology and their equipment and machinery and proposed how they could turn "swords into ploughshares".The capture of the State would ensure they also had the shield to protect them as they applied the already thought out procedures and re-tooling.  Surely part of our purpose is to highlight that the co-ordination you boast of is in fact in many cases not applied. Isn't a part of the socialist case is that we intend to fix this. Isn't there rivalry between those various departments and bureaucracies to capture higher proportion of budgets and to defend what they deem to be their "turf" which often hinders cooperation among the State. You are right..there will be "authority" iin socialism. Whilst everybody who works in the hospital and those from the surrounding who use it will view the hospital as "theirs", it won't mean an ownership entitlement where the porter wheels the patient into the operating theatre and carries out the surgery. It may well mean the surgeon or anaethesist goes to the ward and wheels the patient to the operation and the porter position no longer exists. Maybe when the surgical staff scrubs up before the operation, they will be expected to scrub down the facility after it. I'll let that be decided after the Revolution by those connected with health to decide….delegation of decision making…which will i hazard to guess reflect little of such practices we have in it these days.No, i'm still not convinced by your Royal Charters and your Privy Councils as proof that it is a requirement or obligation for the reason we need to capture the State, historical anachronisms, that they are.I agree those chartered societies are vital, i grant you, since they are either professional bodies or trade associations that will be needed to collate data, disseminate information and coordinate society.Are they part of the State because of their title? No more than the Jockey Club is for the administration of horse-racing and breeding (albeit most of the members are in the Establishment and from the ruling class)…or Kennel Club…which i think the RSPCA and PDSA and a host of animal charities may well choose to take over from and change. I'm off-line for a few days so i'll have time to ruminate on the topic as i re-new my visa…submitting yet again to the present power of the State and looking forward to the time that the first act of socialism will end the Immigration Offices and burn all the passports …once the staff have copied the computer files, naturally, and added it to the Census Department data, which i assume will carry on doing its statistical mandate. Bye for now…

[alanjjohnstone]

i actually wish them good luck with their ideals even if i agree with you that they will eventually be sadly disappointed…socialism cannot exist in one country much less one city …

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Vull ser alcaldessa de Barcelona i governar obeint la gent, com sempre hauria d'haver estat

– “govern by obeying”But i think their hopes, dreams and aspirations adds towards a necessary change in peoples views and opinions…it is a matter of learning the lesson of failure and going further beyond the next time around. http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/Barcelona-Election-Puts-Social-Movements-in-control-of-the-city-20150526-0053.htmlThe article quote Murray Bookchin's municipalism..

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“Unless we actually run candidates in city council elections, we are not dealing with power. And to live in fear that power might “corrupt” not only ignores the many cases where it did not corrupt; it ignores the need to gain power. Theater, street events, and other photogenic escapades merely play at politics rather than engage in it.”

  

[alanjjohnstone]

I'm getting a bit confused here. No-one is declaring that we set up a parallel system since the claim being made is that these administrative bodies  system exists outside the State as it is and don't need the legitimacy of a socialist majority. If in its deliberations the GMC deem that things need amended in the field of medicine, surely the population are not going to say….no way…you may have the expertise and experience but we won't recognise it because it hasn't gone through the Civil Servants in the Ministry of Health or whatever its called these days. (Sorry LBird…in some cases i bow to the scientists democracy and not a supposed wider democracy)  I'm puzzled by the claim that by a parliamentary majority ie capturing the State machinery means we take possession of those organisations and bodies.  Surely, the  people who work in them will be the executors of the socialist transformation of them, firstly placing it under the democratic control of those who work in those organisations combined with the members of the communities they serve and those will be the agents adapting what of the State viewed as fit for purpose and lopping off all the redundant organs. One of the earliest parts discarded will be Parliament itself, once it served its purpose , as LBird suggests, soon as it takes the Royal Seal and rubber stamps the abolition of all property laws. It then has fulfilled its role and disappears. I accept and have said earlier on the thread that situations and conditions at the time will determine the time-table of this and it cannot be decided in advance. It will be as soon as practically possible. First it is the Royal Charter…Now it is the Privy Council…i'm not a constitutional historian but enough of those relics of monarchal feudalism…just what we do when the crown declines to give Royal Assent to the appropriation of its wealth and lands…the rubber stamp is invalid then, isn't it?…but the real world means it is going to be ignored.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_charterhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privy_councilI refer you to your Message #7, YMSYour fears of typhoid are unfounded, no one is saying existing structures are immediately dismantled and new ones in parallel constructed…we simply take control of those we wish to keep from the inside as workers already within it and we discard those we don't want. And i agree, too often we readily dismiss such seemingly coercive bodies as repressive…I remember Frank Simpkins and Pieter Lawrence doing their best to remind us that we won't be going to Rampton Hospital and handing over the keys to the patients locked up there. In a way i view the electoral process similarly to the SLP…sword and shield…parliament and the people (i chose people because i think it is not necessarily limited to the SIUs or workers councils)…and depending on the conditions and tactics their roles interchanging (as i believe the SLP did themselves reverse the roles of the SIU industrial action and political action)Once we have a majority and again i don't think it means a vast majority numerically but an effective political majority, and are organised across all areas of life, then we shall look at the implementation plan for socialism…and it may well be patchy so i accept your caveat that the State may exist to coordinate but more likely to cordon and protect socialist regions from disputed and non-socialist parts.Anyways, i keep saying this …Aren't we getting a we bit ahead of ourselves in this discussion…a few hundred votes have yet to be metamorphised into millions and the topic i reckon won't feature prominently in the questions we will be asked right now…

[alanjjohnstone]

I'll bow to your historical knowledge,YMS, but the point still stands, i think.They do not require the State to perform their tasks and are self-regulatory. Air Traffic Laws are determined not by an individual State but by professional bodies albeit operating under the UN charter so i think the point stands that capturing the machinery of the State is not required regards to many of the functions of society. They are outside the remit of any one state's control. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_specialized_agencies_of_the_United_NationsBut here we are on this forum, me in provincial Thailand and you in London, yet we communicate because as Wiki explains those  who runs it,  is not the State although they do endeavour to submit it to its control.

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The Internet is a globally distributed network comprising many voluntarily interconnected autonomous networks. It operates without a central governing body. The technical underpinning and standardization of the core protocols  is an activity of the Internet Engineering Task Force(IETF), a non-profit organization of loosely affiliated international participants that anyone may associate with by contributing technical expertise.

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet#GovernanceRegardless of a Royal Charter, (a red herring, if i have ever seen one) the point is that it would continue its purpose without the SPGB capuring the machinery of the State via Parliament and elections. Its social role is independnt of the State and your early concerns of dying of cholera because of the break-down of health authorities isn't valid simply because we never took political control of the state-machinery, as would much of the functioning of present society and if people turned up at their work as normal post-revolution and performed their duties while of course continuing the transformation of work-places that begun when the small numbers of socialists began to grow into a significant section of the work-force and begn to turn their attention to their industries and occupations. I'm sure the nursing profession and the pharmacists plus the local health authorities (or hospital trusts)  and public health departments and food standards agencies would be joining the GMC in re-organising health-care….or at least the workers covered by their professional umbrellas will be, for ease of communication and liaison. Not, i think the State but the people involved within these fields will be forming cooperation chains. I worked a short time in a library, as i believe you do. The ILL service doesn't require any state intervention or direct control to make it work efficiently. I accept SP point that the elements of the State machine is in many ways autonomous and its workers because of the rise in their own socialist consciousness will simply assume the responsibilities of the existing State (a process that is organic in the growth of socialist ideas among our fellow workers)  without any need for the rubber-stamp approval of a socialist majority in parliament   

[alanjjohnstone]

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We'll need some sort of sea authority, transport links like railways will need global authorities.  You can't have a railway where each branch and each train does its own thing.

 We shouldn't think people will simply walk away from their jobs and responsibilities come "The Revolution". Simply take that train ride and see the complexity of getting to A from B by rail. It is going to be incredibly hard to regain and recover knowledge if the actual workers and operators were no longer there.Continuity of the smooth running of society is a priority, not its disruption …and if that is too Hobbesian, so be it But i'm with SP that the State actually performs a minimal role…These things run autonomously. Take Air Traffic Control. It is organised under the auspices of  the United Nations.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Civil_Aviation_Organization#Governing_CouncilAnd what about all the rules and regulations run independent of the State by trade or professional bodies, i suppose the easiest example is the General Medical Council supervising doctors. http://www.gmc-uk.org/about/Council_and_other_governance_groups.aspThe risk is not that without the State we won't have responsible administration. It doesn't take the State to get mail from Peckham to Peking. Again, it is the UN overseeing it. It has become  self-regulating. 

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The Postal Union did not elect an international postal parliament in order to make laws for all postal organisations adherent to the Union. The railways of Europe did not elect an international railway parliament in order to regulate the running of the trains and the partition of the income of international traffic. And the Meteorological and Geological Societies of Europe did not elect either meteorological or geological parliaments to plan polar stations, or to establish a uniform subdivision of geological formations and a uniform coloration of geological maps. They proceeded by means of agreement. https://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/www/kropotkin/ancom/

[alanjjohnstone]

We do envisage a fairly rapid word-wide revolution but that is rather relative. We won't all fall in line simultaneously, will we, even if for most part , its a matter of weeks or months apart…(perhaps years in some regions where religion has a stronger hold o consciousness and behaviour)I sometimes envisage only parts of  countries actually progressing towards socialism. The Chinese coastal region, for instance, rather than all the agricultural dominated interior hinterland, may develop socialism first. This, I think, is a risky analysis since have read Trotskyists/Lenininists describing the St Petersburg factor…whatever happened there determined the course of Russia's development…But much the same as most capital cities …Paris…London…Cairo…or whereever. Politics seems to be determined by the centres and not always by dispersed populations.  Where we have a majority we get on with the task of building socialism and won't be waiting around. It will be for the non-socialists regions to adapt their relationships with a socialist world and catch up. Control of the state would be required to maintain international relations with those countries lagging behind…Who in the Helsinki Cooperative Producers Association has the authority to speak for Finland if the UK still is in flux and in the midst of the class war for supremecy and the still-existing state under capitalist control wants the customs and excise documents for the IKEA flat-packs when it comes trade? Crude analogy but i think people understand the issues involved …i think it was referred to in another context as simple book-keeping in another post but that paper-work will be required and somebody has to put their signature to it which is recognised.I see where everybody is coming from but i am not persuaded that there exists any real differences. Who knows if the socialist majority will immediately or gradually dismantle the State and which parts will deserved to be retained. Neither side of the debate are advocating a "Workers State", nobody is arguing that the "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" is anything but another way of describing a socialist majority in parliament legally and constitutionally ending capitalist property laws. There is more similarity than differences.Like so many of our ideas, the get -out clause is things will be very much clearer at the time and decisions will be made by those involved in light of the situation pertaining to them and not from some advance abstract theory that ends with a square peg being hammered into a round hole. Our politics is the here and now and takes priority. We start from where we are at which i think was what Marx blamed the Utopian Socialists of NOT doing.  That's why i consider our attitude to reforms and reformism takes precedence. How do we achieve the popularity where we might be in an actual position of capturing the State. First things first. I have mentioned that one purpose for electoral activities is to challenge the capitalist parties on their own patch, not just being a barometer. We have a parliamentary propaganda role as a minority party.  The debate with other "socialists" is whether we engage with reformers to either obtain a palliative now, or to defend gains already gleaned previously from the capitalist class…SP already suggests we should be more active in defending the attacks on civil liberties and human rights…the names themselves for those democratic ideals infer that they are given parliamentary defence and the purpose of any protests,demonstrations and strikes is to demand those constitutional guarantees via the State. In the other thread, those democratic privileges cannot be switched off at will ONLY because it results in people opposing it. If there isn't resistance, then the switch is very easily turned to the off-position. We see that every time a war arises and elections are suspended, censorship imposed and strikes outlawed. And after wars, there is a reluctance to return to the previous status quo…there is no rush to repeal the anti-democratic laws…

[alanjjohnstone]

I'm not sure if everyone has read this discussion document on Parliament from Manchester Br. in 1969 but it can be read on my personal bloghttp://mailstrom.blogspot.com/2007/08/revolutionary-use-of-parliament.html"Manchester branch therefore urges the Delegate Meeting (and Party members as a whole) to give this question of the revolutionary use of parliament urgent consideration. Our branch maintains that only by constantly deepening our analysis of capitalism and improving the way in which we present this analysis and the socialist alternative to the workers can the Socialist Party expect to extend its influence among the working class." SP's thread seems a rather belated response to the discussion recommendation  But i think perhaps these other extracts from various SS articles might assist in giving the party view:- 

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“When there is a majority of socialist delegates there will be no Queen's Speech, no White Papers nor any of the other shams that pass for democracy today. Just the historic announcement that capitalism has been abolished and that, henceforth, real participative democracy in the administration of social affairs, at local, regional and world levels, will obtain.”http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1990s/1996/no-1107-november-1996/capitalism%E2%80%99s-democratic-dictatorship 

 

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“Nor do we see why existing more or less democratic institutions cannot be transformed into instruments of the Socialist revolution. Given that there is effective universal suffrage, local councils and some central elected body like Parliament or Congress it seems pointless not to use them both to register majority support for the revolution and to co-ordinate the measures needed to carry it through. Why bother to set up also "institutions that would parallel existing structures of government"? No doubt as the socialist revolution approaches people will be organising in all kinds of informal bodies ready to take over and run society after the end of class rule, but as long as democratically-elected councils and parliament exist winning control of them through the ballot-box must surely be central to the strategy of any socialist party in a modern industrial country.”http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1970s/1970/no-790-june-1970/majority-revolution 

 

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“Democracy is not a set of rules or a parliament; it is a process, a process that must be fought for. The struggle for democracy is the struggle for socialism. It is not a struggle for reforms, for this or that political system, for this or that leader, for some rule change or other—it is the struggle for an idea, for a belief, a belief that we can run our own lives, that we have a right to a say in how society is run, for a belief that the responsibility for democracy lies not upon the politicians or their bureaucrats, but upon ourselves.”http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1990s/1998/no-1132-december-1998/struggle-democracy 

 

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"In these circumstances the easiest and surest way for such a socialist majority to gain control of political power in order to establish socialism is to use the existing electoral machinery to send a majority of mandated socialist delegates to the various parliaments of the world. This is why we advocate using Parliament; not to try to reform capitalism (the only way Parliaments have been used up till now, which has inevitably failed to do anything for the working class since capitalism simply cannot be reformed to work for their benefit), but for the single revolutionary purpose of abolishing capitalism and establishing socialism by converting the means of production and distribution into the common property of the whole of society. No doubt, at the same time, the working class will also have organised itself, at the various places of work, in order to keep production going, but nothing can be done here until the machinery of coercion which is the state has been taken out of the hands of the capitalist class by political action.”http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1980s/1980/no-912-august-1980/world-revolution-another-confused-group

Apart from the question of capturing the State, i also think we should recall that one of the purposes is to enter the political field is in order to expose and oppose every party whose policy works against the interests of the working class. A reason for parliamentary action less than the capture of the machinery of the State. The Socialist Party will use parliament, as we use the internet and the media, in order to complete the proletarian education and organisation, and to bring to a conclusion the revolution that is prepared by this. 

[alanjjohnstone]

Never read any Hobbes so you got the advantage of me, SP.  I think the consensus is that we build upon what we got. The State, centrally and locally, has created departments and ministries for the administration of civic society. There is little reason to duplicate them. Robbo's analogy of organ transplants is useful here. We use what is useful and discard the rest. I have no dispute with SP over his scenario that the actual progress and process of what is happening will minimise the need for formally capturing the machinery of the state…Those will already be transforming themselves as the numbers of socialists grows and the proximity of success nears just as the wider society will be. I don't recognise LBird's problem with the SPGB as a disagreement. I made it clear in an earlier post that 

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Call them workers council, producers guilds or whatever but they will also transform the trade union movement into a much more hands-on administration of industry. At the moment, there is an absence of such and when created as part of the revolutionary process (and not post-revolution) they need to be integrated into the other expressions of democracy which maybe can be described as geographic democracy. Combined they become social democracy

And YMS concurred

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Yes, within and between firms we will need to establish democracy, as that is a sphere where democracy currently doesn't exist, however that doesn't mean where local bodies already exist we should abolish them (re-purpose, maybe),  we'll still need geographic bodies

From the SPGB's earliest debates with syndicalists and industrial unionists, we stressed social and not sectional ownership of industry etc. so we have to include the voice of the wider community in decision making even of cooperatives and workers councils, likewise , the delegates of production need to be present in community administration…Again YMS recognised that there has to be overlap and liaison between all aspects of society. I simply see no disagreement of any substance on this issue. I simply do not think it will be an either /or nor "inside and outside" parliament vying for dominance. We will be a large enough and varied enough movement to conduct both simultaneously. Brian's and Robbo's position that there will be a rise of self-help, non-profit associations will also apply and the constrictions placed upon them will heighten activity and opposition against capitalism. Perhaps we will not need to use the coercive arms of the State but for a period we should take control of them and having them in reserve is sufficient threat to belay any risk of counter-revolution. LBird acceptance of Paliament's role of legitmacy is a further development of Brian's nose -counting he mentioned earlier…and Engels thermometer analogy of elections and i doubt many will oppose it. I think really when it comes down to it, our Small Party of Good Boys image, that we are a parliamentary electoral party tied to majority voting for socialism is not what we actually advocate but it is the misrepresentation others have of us and because of those earlier disputes we had with syndicalists, industrial unionists, anarchists, Leninists, vanguardists  etc etc , we have ourselves been guilty of over-emphasising a certain legalistic outlook and not drawn sufficient attention to the nuances and caveats of our case. We have never declared that there is a one-fix-for-all solutuion and depending on situations and conditions around the world, there will be different ways of emancipation. Regard the UK, in the present time, nobody has convinced me, that we should abandon our core activity of taking political control through the existing political democracy. I have, however, been often persuaded that we should also take on board alternative tactics and strategies of obtaining political control outside Parliament. 

[alanjjohnstone]

I find this sort of "resistance" encouraging and something to be applauded. We don't need to be actually amidst it, but report it as something positive can be our contribution. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Pfu8hOVGPyk

[alanjjohnstone]

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it would be an excellent propaganda pitch for us.

We could take a leaf out of the example of the band KLF,( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K_Foundation#The_K_Foundation_Burn_A_Million_Quid )Get all our party funds in the new £20 William Morris notes and burn the lot or using safety pins make a tapestry with them allJust joking…

[alanjjohnstone]

I think certain democratic bodies need to be created within the sphere of production and distribution or do we not intend to have industrial democracy as it was once described. Call them workers council, producers guilds or whatever but they will also transform the trade union movement into a much more hands-on administration of industry. At the moment, there is an absence of such and when created as part of the revolutionary process (and not post-revolution) they need to be integrated into the other expressions of democracy which maybe can be described as geographic democracy. Combined they become social democracyI also think perhaps existing but often dormant bodies will be revived such as at the local level the parish council. I know many responsibilities can be transferred to them. But they may well have already existing tenants associations to absorb or merge with too. We should be wary of implying the exporting a British-centric model to other regions of the world who may well have stronger traditions of local democracy and assemblies. The Town Hall Meetings of New England is often cited by Bookchin admirers but in many Central and South American countries there exist indigenous peoples decision-making organs in parallel with the nation-state. 

[alanjjohnstone]

As i keep saying, people come to socialistic conclusions by different journeys and thus bring their own particular baggage with them. A number of the comments reflect your view on this article. He always seems to me to be a miserable bastard in interviews….might be because of his vegan diet ;-pAnother astute observation about him from yourself He is a bit like Rikki Fulton's,  Reverend I. M. JollyI highlighted the ones that corrected his view of Marx. Sometimes an article is worth it because of the responses it brings forth, not because it is 100% correctI was also disappointed by the fact i couldn't follow up on the quotes 

[alanjjohnstone]

Surely, one of the easier ways, much more practical than a convolated assassination, would merely dump him through the upcoming elections, which was why he was on the campaign trail in Dallas. His marital infidelities were well known among "insiders" so simply releasing details to the press would have alienated his Catholic vote.We know the power of the media when it is put to work. Leaks of all his dirty dealings would also have exposed him as another run of the mill politician and knocked this knight in shining armor off his horse.From a previous 83% popularity rating it had dropped to 70% (although during the civil rights phase it was as low as 56%) LBJ had a 79% approval rating when he took office. I don't know which sector of the ruling class being referred to but  Vincent Bugliosi estimated that a total of 42 groups, 82 assassins, and 214 people had been accused in various Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories. You can take your pick but the most convincing evidence, forensic, ballistic, eyewitness and circumstantial, has LHO as the most likely culprit with the means and the opportunity and the motive. Conspiracists have come no way as close to presenting a more compelling alternative to the one that LHO was guilty on his own with no assistance from others. 

[alanjjohnstone]

We want control of the machinery of government, national and local, because that is essential to the achievement of socialism. This is our fundamental reason for contesting elections (albeit in present circumstances, the real reason is only publicity)The state—the agency of political power—can, and does, expropriate property, or transfer it to capitalists for their direct control. It can, and does when necessary, use violent force to protect the interests of the capitalist class. That force is used against other capitalists, and against the working class. The courts, police and military all respond to political power, not economic power contrary to the arguments of the industrial unionists and syndicalists. When the vast majority of the working class is socialist, so will be the police and military whose members are working class. At that time, the socialist working class will use its political power to capture the state. When the state, in its last action as the state, transfers legal ownership of the means of production to the people of the world as a whole, the economic power of the capitalists will have been extinguished by the political power of the working class. The capitalists could do nothing, with their economic power, to prevent expropriation. The fear that they could keep the working class out of the factories etc. is completely unfounded. How could they? Remember that the working class outnumbers them 10 or 20 to one. Also remember that the military and police (all working class, and mostly socialist) will be responsible to the political power of the working class. Even in the situations of Spanish Civil War and Chile most of the police and army either remained loyal to the government (or waited until who was going to prevail before choosing sides) The State is the form taken by the centre of social administration without which modern industrial society couldn't function. We want the working class to take it over and convert it into an unarmed democratic administration of things. We want to see an end to capitalist class rule not the breakdown of society.The workers en masse don't need create a different and more democratic decision-making structure from the ground up. What they need to do is to take over and perfect the existing, historically-evolved structures. We don't need to construct socialist society from scratch; this is not the way social evolution works; there will be a degree of continuity between what exists now and what will exist in socialism as there always has been between one system of society and another. We are not utopian system-builders like Parecon or Zeitgeist. You don't abolish the state, getting rid of our control of our society at the point of actually having won the thing, and then play at utopias. You grab it and hang on against anything the capitalist class, nationally and internationally, throws at us. During this process also you are transforming the institutions we hold from capitalist into socialist ones. What do we actually need to make a revolution? We need to be able to act in an imperfect world rather than waiting for a perfect one. Revolution is not merely an announcement of a successful ballot, it is a process, and the process itself will draw people into the struggle. The revolution makes the mass party – the actual date that power can be seen to shift to ourselves is not the beginning, but the beginning of a different phase. The revolution has a snowball effect. The more change is imminent, the faster and bigger it grows and rolls, without conscious direction of leaders, as many vanguardists and social democrats have often found. You cannot stop an idea when its time has come, as is frequently said. The Iron Heel couldn't maintain Marcos in Manila, the Shah in Tehran nor the party apparatchiks and nomenclatura  in Moscow, Berlin or Warsaw , nor in Tunisia when people decided to move. Despite the exceptions such as the Sisi counter-revolution in Egypt, when people want change they achieve it.Workers will use both fists to fight for socialism, and will not rely on only a right hook or be just a south-paw boxer. They will recognise it will be both parliament and non- parliament means to socialism. It is the democratic result that we want. Our case for Parliament is that it is the most efficacious application of the workers will to establish socialism. We seek the least disruptive method of revolution. We rather not build our socialism on the literal ruins of capitalism." The constructive element in the social revolution will be the the action of the Industrial Unions seizing the means of production in order to administer the wants of the community …Thus Industrial Unionism is the constructive weapon in the coming social revolution…In order to facilitate the work of industrial organisation it is absolutely imperative for the workers to disarm the capitalist class by wrenching from it its power over the political State …by destroying the capitalist control of the State , makes possible a peaceful social revolution…the work of the political weapon is purely destructive , to destroy the capitalist system. " William Paul , The State . Its Origins and Function ,1917 .Although we may have reservations on the actual economic organisation ie industrial unions , William Paul was much in accord with the SPGB views. "…The Socialist Party, in aiming for the control of the State, is a political party in the immediate sense, but we have an economic purpose in view, namely, the conversion of the means of living into the common property of society. Therefore, the question necessarily arises whether an economic organisation acting in conjunction with the political is vital to our task. We have on more than one occasion pronounced ourselves in agreement with the need for such an organisation, and in so doing have flatly denied the charge that the Socialist Party of Great Britain is "nothing but a pure and simple political party of Socialism." The Socialist Party and economic organisation, Socialist Standard , 1937William Paul, again:-"In order to facilitate the work of the industrial organisation, it is absolutely imperative for the workers to disarm the capitalist class by wrenching from it its power over the political State. The State powers include the armed forces of the nation which may be turned against the revolutionary workers. The political weapon of Labour, by destroying the capitalist control of the State makes possible a peaceful social revolution. But in order to tear the State out of the grasp of the ruling class the workers' political organisation must capture the political machinery of capitalism."

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