We Are The People !!

Billions live in dire poverty amid unimaginable wealth, and we hurtle relentlessly towards environmental catastrophe.  We see capitalism as a destructive system that hurts, divides and exploits the vast majority of our people for the sake of profits and power for the few.

There is no shortage of  ready-made blueprints for a fairer society. However, socialism is not something which can be decreed into being by political parties or individuals but must be created by the mass participation of workers ourselves. Many people may think that socialism sounds like a good idea but doubt it would work in practice. However first it is worth asking "does capitalism work?". We believe there is ample evidence that a socialist society would function far better than our current capitalist one for the vast majority of people.

When we speak of socialism we are talk of a way of organising society based on the principle of “from each according to ability, to each according to need”, and secondly how we achieve such a society based on cooperation, solidarity and meeting human needs. Instead of ownership or control of the means of production - land, factories, offices and so on - being in the hands of private individuals or the state, a socialist society is based on the common ownership and democratic control of those means. And instead of production for exchange and profit, socialism means production to meet human wants.

Today workers  produce everything and run all the services necessary for life. We lay the roads, build the homes, drive the trains, care for the sick, raise the children, make the food, design the products, make the clothes and teach the next generation. Examples abound demonstrating that workers can effectively run workplaces themselves. In fact, the bosses hinder us more than they help and we can do so much better without them. Without the profit motive, any technological advancement which makes a work process more efficient, instead of just laying workers off and making those remaining work harder (which happens at present), we can all just work a little less and have more free time. We can instead focus on how to work less, make what work we need to do more enjoyable, have more fun, more happiness and more joy. we can begin to relate to each other as human beings.

Socialism means a moneyless society where our activity - and its products - no longer take the form of things to be bought and sold. There is ample evidence demonstrating that we do not need the threat of destitution or starvation hanging over us in order to engage in productive activity. For most of human history, we have not had money or wage labour. In hunter-gatherer societies, for example, which were overwhelmingly peaceful and egalitarian there was no distinction between work and play. Even today, a lot of work is done for free.  Nearly 10% of people also carry out unpaid care work and 25% of adults in England carry out voluntary work at least once a month. Almost every useful type of work you can think of is also done by some people for free, not as "work" for wages, demonstrating that they are not strictly necessary.

Studies show that socially useful reason for doing something is the best motivator and that money is not an effective motivator for good performance at complex tasks than people having the freedom and control to do what they want how they want, and having a constructive. The free software movement demonstrates that people don't need wages to be motivated to produce.
 a socially useful goal and can be superior to traditional organisation for profit.

We are socialists because we see capitalism as harmful to the vast majority of  the world’s people. The system we live under, by its very nature, grinds the poor and working people and sets one group against another. We see in socialism a more just, more cooperative and more peaceful society. Socialism can offer an alternative which can meet the basic needs of people and provide productive and fulfilling work. Socialism offers a future free from the fears of poverty, sexism, racism, dog-eat-dog competition, joblessness, and the loneliness of old age. It will be a society that allows each person to create and produce according to her or his ability and to obtain what she or he needs.

We advocate and work for socialism – that is, common ownership and collective control of the means of production (factories, fields, utilities, etc.) . We want a system based on cooperation, where the people build together for the common good.

The task of The Socialist Party is the organisation and the building of a mass movement of the working class to fight for socialism. We have deep criticisms of the practice of all the various groups calling themselves Marxist-Leninist vanguard parties. Only a conscious socialist movement of the working class can provide the organisation capable of struggling for and ushering in the new society.  Parliament grew out of feudalism and after the capitalist revolution developed as the natural custodian of the interests of Capitalism. It was founded on private property foundations. Its laws are the laws of private property. The modifications that have taken place, the extension of the franchise and the growth of social legislation for the working-class are the reflection of the growing strength and power of the working-class. The more Parliament reflects the class struggle in its work, the more the capitalists attempt to use it as the means to regulate capitalist economy, the more they are impeded by the increasing claims of the worker. The “safety valve” of bourgeois democracy thus becomes no longer “safe” for private property. We call upon the workers to make the machine of Parliament effective for economic change. The way to defend the democratic gains won by years of struggle is to use those gains on every field for working-class advance day in and day out. It must by using the machine of Parliament, by adapting it and changing it to serve new purposes, to win power so that it shall transfer into the hands of the exploited the land and the industries. It must wage the class struggle if class domination is to end. By winning that fight real democracy will supplant capitalist democracy, genuine social democracy will take the place of the sham democracy that hides the dictatorship of Capital. Then, and then only, on the basis of the social ownership of the means of production will there be a government of the People, by the People, for the People.