Whatever the political incidents which the Socialist Revolution culminates (what we call the "political act"), it is an historical and social process going on now and daily, and in which the dynamic element is capital. The Socialist Revolution, which is the aim of our movement, is the final phase of a single revolution from production for use at one level to production for use at another, in which the succession of intermediate revolutions and social systems (Patriarchal Communism, Chattel Slavery, Feudalism, Mercantilism, Capitalism 1, 2, 3) are pre-requisite phases. The proposition put forward have to be compressed within a page so that much more than is said must be left unsaid, and most of what is said must be left unexplained. It is perhaps our acknowledgment (as yet unconscious, as always in the first place) that the Industrial Revolution which established " social production " is not immediately followed by the revolution for social ownership, but by the State Capitalist revolution which establishes the institutional technique (and thereby the ideological demand) for the classless administration of the common weal. From this questioning of ripeness stems our controversies: why aren't the workers socialist is there a transition stage do men make history can we hasten the ripening with mirrors to reflect light from the sun of Socialist society? In other words, ripe? how ripe? how to ripen? And this questioning is a social product. We still take this view, with a pinch of salt. We used to say that conditions were ripe for Socialism. It reflects (as does the whole field of science) the uncertainties of a revolution in process-from liberalism to communism-in contrast with the certainties of the nineteenth-century consolidation of revolution achieved (from Mercantilism to Industrialism).
This healthy situation has developed, not, I think, as a perversion resulting from the world's indifference, nor as a mere clerkly desire for a half-century stock-taking it registers, rather, the impact of actual history.
We are busy criticising our own position. The Party is discussing questions which bear closely on its object and principles, questions it has not always deemed it necessary to discuss. Spgb-forum-journal-1952-60-article-index.docxġ.1 THE NATURE OF THE SOCIALIST REVOLUTION Forum Journal was an internal party journal of the Socialist Party of Great Britain (SPGB) between 19
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