Free Ourselves Now

Marx began his political activity as a philosopher that became steadily more social in content. He came to view the right of private property, the right of a few to own and control the means by which all must live, the right of the owners of the means of production to utilise it to exploit the rest of the community in the interest of their personal profit, the right to determine what shall be produced and how, regardless of the misery and wretchedness of those who produce it as wage-slavery, the right to maintain the multitude in chains that a few masters might live in luxury. In the Middle Ages, a handful of nobles feasted and wallowed in idleness on the enforced labour of his serfs. In the 19th Century, the masses were herded into factories, to obtain the necessities to live, while the product of their labour was appropriated by the new lords - capitalists. The right to private property, the right to exploit, the right to rob, the right to over-produce and cause crises, the right to compete, and cause wars became enscribed in the constitution. Marx diagnosed the cause of capitalist ills, and offered the basic answer.  The abolition of the right of private property, and, instead, its replacement by the common ownership of the means of production, so that all may enjoy the fruit of their labour. Marx offered a choice, a very simple choice between two worlds, a world of exploitation, social injustice, chronic insecurity, economic crisis, and recurring wars ... and a world of rational and  sustainable economic planning, control over your lives and a comfortable living standard,plus the end of nationalism and a durable peace. A choice where a tiny few rule and the vast mass are dispossessed or a cooperative commonwealth.

Since the manifesto of Marx and Engels, socialists have disdained to hide our aims. We want to see society changed. We want to see it transformed from a thing of wars and recessions, to a real brotherhood of mankind; but powerful, wealthy people don’t want it changed, because they have a vested interest in it, and the closer the inevitable change comes, the more desperate they become, and the more vicious their attacks on the most active in the labour movement which is going to change it.

 We live in a world rife with misery and oppression. Today the whole world is in the grip of a deep economic crisis of capitalism. Capitalism has become a fetter on production itself. So the destruction of surplus goods, goods that starving people need, the waste of human labour, the sabotaging of new inventions, the tipping of food into land-fills, the feeding of wheat to pigs – the whole productive system jammed, and the capitalists seek a way out in war.  In Asia, Africa and America general living standards are falling sharply and a growing proportion of the people of these countries are underfed and actually starving. It is an astonishing paradox that, in a world where science and technology have advanced to the stage where there could be plenty for all, there is a growing amount of want and hunger. People are reaching a point where it is no longer possible to live, they see the limitations of the trade union struggle in the persistence of insecurity. Private ownership must go and social ownership must take its place. There is no other way. It is capitalism, with its economic crises and wars – or socialism, the only chance for economic freedom and peace.

Today the human species stands at a turning point: either we develop further by means of the  socialist transformation of society or we  are eventually destroyed by the increasingly antagonistic contradictions of capitalism and the environment. There is nothing inevitable about the further advancement of the human species. Truth be told , the only real, lasting way forward is socialism but whether or not this road is taken is a matter of decision for human beings and one class in particular: the working class. Only the working class has sufficient objective interest in the overthrow of capitalism and the strength to carry out this task. The working class has it within its power to overthrow decaying, crisis-ridden moribund capitalist society and in so doing to pave the way for the liberation of the whole of humanity. The Socialist Party shall do everything within our power to agitate for the working class to overthrow its capitalist masters. The Socialist Party support the concept of the rational, free and completely co-operative society.

Life always moves and always changes. Old traditions are forgotten. Accepted truths are challenged and repudiated. Ideas clash. People had been promised a new and everlasting prosperity, a new world, now millions hope merely for a job, any sort of job and any sort of income to ward off poverty. Millions must accept support, whether direct from the State or from  the “relief work” of charities and churches.  Aroused hopes have been cruelly dashed. Capitalist civilisation introduced want in the midst of abundance. The situation is idiotic. What has come of the colossal and wonderful development of science and technology? Has it made humanity stronger, healthier, happier? Has it given leisure to the producers? Has it brought comfort and contentment to the people? A few hours’ daily work would produce enough to satisfy the material and intellectual needs of all. Never has work been so prolonged, so exhausting, so injurious to people’s and deadens their intelligence. Men and women are under the yoke of the soulless machine world, alienation is their reward for working, poverty when they have no job.

The media has always sought to deny the claims of Marx but, nevertheless, it has been obliged over and over again to concede that wealth is actually concentrated in very few hands and that the vast majority is excluded from ownership.  Intent upon killing Marx, the pro-capitalist commentators  keep resurrecting his conclusions. When they report the research they are obliged to admit that this wealthy elite itself is the tiny Wall Street oligarchy that dominates the corporate wealth of the nation; that oligarchy is a still smaller group contained within this small segment of the population. Financial interest groups representing only a few dozens of individuals can and do dominate giant corporations or whole groups of such corporations.

Socialism is not a reform, it is a revolution. This is the position held by all  socialists.We are not reformers we are revolutionaries. Let it be understood everywhere that by revolution socialists do not mean violence or bloodshed. It is safe to say that every socialist in the world would regard it a calamity to our aim, as well as to humanity, to have a violent upheaval in society. Socialism offers a possible, a peaceful solution. We mean by “revolutionary socialism” the capture of the political powers of the nation by the working class as opposed to the capitalist class. This is the essence of revolutionary socialism. The social revolution is an international revolution. We are all cosmopolitans, endorsing in the fullest sense international socialism. Most of the objections to socialism offered by the reformists are simply subterfuges to distract from the real issues.

While it is clear that most workers are not yet won over to our overall revolutionary perspectives, we aim to convince our fellow workers based on the shared experience of coming struggles. We are socialists, wishful above all things to advance socialism, and by socialism we mean the common ownership of all the agencies of wealth production, and this involves the complete supercession of the capitalist system, and the conducting of all industrial and trading relations on a co-operative basis.

In former times, famine appeared only when the harvests failed. In today’s capitalist society, famines happen when granaries  burst with the fruits of the earth, and when the market is gorged with the products of industry. The capitalists have not proved competent. It has seized the social wealth to enjoy it and failed to guarantee to their worker even a miserable livelihood.

After every economic depression the cry has gone up, “It can never happen again!” And it has. Cyclical crises  are inherent in capitalist production: a recession is as characteristic as prosperity and as frequent. Captains of industry and finance at no time really understand the movement of the economic forces they exploit yet after each recession the capitalists, as they once more scoop up the profits of industry and speculation, begin to believe that they are again the saviors of mankind. The government joins in, declaring there will be  no more hard times because of the  system of “ regulatory controls” instituted. The liberals and progressives while perharps acknowledging the continuation of  abuses, believe that capitalism, with all its shortcomings, is working toward the “larger good.” Always, in one form or another, capitalism creates an ideology to disguise and justify its predatory character. It is a necessary device of class domination. Always there exists a deceptive conception of capitalism, readily provided by its intellectuals-for-hire.

Capitalism has taken possession of our planet. It is time to free ourselves.