Socialists will be heard

Change is needed. The system is not working, at least, not for most people. That is one thing very clear to many. Capitalism requires profit, profit requires growth, and growth means environmental destruction. It is simple as that. Why socialism? Because the future of humanity depends on it. It is easy as that. For those who have decided to make their stand up and say, “No more”, the questions are which way forward now and how can we change the world? The majority of the population believes that future generations will be worse off than the preceding ones, where the social and ecological disasters of an unbridled capitalism plunge millions of workers into poverty, then revolt is not only possible, it is more than justified.

The rule of the tiny minority is supported by a vast network of ideology, myths and propaganda to justify the unjustifiable. Their message is remarkably uniform in that they claim the system of capitalism, despite its problems, is the best of all possible worlds and is based on human nature. It is humanity, itself which is corrupted, by the innate human greed or divinely by original sin and therefore exploitation of man by man is our normal state of being. Business retains all of the power. With billions in profits they have the ability to purchase the votes of MPs ensuring their riches will grow while the wages and benefits of those they employ remain near the poverty level.

What concerns the Socialist Party is that far too many either don’t see or are denying the truth. Don’t listen to the false rhetoric, look at the facts and learn for yourself. Shouldn’t adequate shelter, clothing, food and health care be universal? Shouldn’t everyone be guaranteed well-being. "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" is that well-known phrase from the United States Declaration of Independence.

People ask us for our definition of socialism. The men and women in the Socialist Party seek a better world founded on common ownership, equality and democracy. Socialism is not government control of the economy. Yet in the name of socialism we saw common ownership changed into state slavery, a barrier to the very socialism which we seek as an aim. Socialists deny that State ownership can end in anything other than a bureaucratic despotism. The political State throughout history has meant the government by a ruling class. Socialism will require no political State because there will be neither a privileged property class nor a downtrodden propertyless class. The core of socialism is the vision of human beings as social creatures linked by the existence of a common humanity. As the poet John Donne put it, 'no man is an Island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main'. As human beings share a common humanity, they are bound together by a sense of comradeship or fraternity (literally meaning 'brotherhood', but broadened in this context to embrace all humans). This encourages socialists to prefer cooperation to competition, and to favour collectivism over. In this view, cooperation enables people to harness their collective energies and strengthens the bonds of community, while competition pits individuals against each other, breeding resentment, conflict and hostility.

For example, our agriculture system should be for sustaining people but today it is denuding the nation’s topsoil while poisoning land, water, workers and consumers and enriching corporations? Food should not be just a commodity, a way to make money, but instead a way to nourish people and the planet and a means to safeguard our future and we should reconfigure the system for that purpose. But without an agreement on goals, without statements of purpose, we are going to continue to see changes that are not in the interest of the majority. Increasingly, it’s corporations that are determining how the world works. Socialism challenges of us to rethink political philosophy and political economy, whose goal should be to create a society in which everyone can flourish. A society so much different from today. The big ideas and strategies for how we should manage society and thrive with the planet are not a set of rules handed down from on high. To develop them for now and the future is a major challenge, and we, ourselves, have to do. No one is going to figure it out for us.

Supporting capitalists with your votes is a vote against yourself and your family. Too often democracy has meant voting every few years for a candidate that is "the lesser of two evils." We need to think, not just who or what we are voting for, but why we should vote at all. What we are severely lacking in is genuine democracy. The concept of ‘democracy’ has been used to curtail both our freedom and our independence of thought. Politicians have told us, over and over again:

“We live in a democracy.  Now exercise your democratic right and vote for us.”

But what is the point of voting if, no matter who you vote for, what you get is the same policies but with just a different presentation. In a survey presented to the UK’s Political and Constitutional Reform Committee when people were asked what would make them turn out and vote, the most popular response was having a “None of the above” box on the ballot paper.  In other words they wanted to vote, they wanted their votes counted, but they also wanted to deliver a vote of no confidence in the current system. The party politicians will argue that we can’t have such an option because it might produce a result that was in support of no party at all; and we must have a government, even if it is one we don’t want.

Many ‘democracies’ end up being dominated by two main parties, right and left, Tory and Labour, Republican and Democrat and so on. To an outsider, there is little difference to be seen between America’s Republicans and Democrats. In Britain, the Tories, Labour and the LibDems are all claiming the centre ground.  No one seems to have realised that the centre ground itself has moved to the right. Not for nothing has the Scottish Labour Party earned the name ‘Red Tories’.  It is now hard to find a genuinely left mainstream party. The Scottish National Party, the Green Party and the Welsh Plaid Cymru are declaring themselves the true left.

Democracy comes from ‘demos’ or ‘deme’, the Greek word for ‘village’. The deme was the smallest administrative unit of the Athenian city-state.  And there, essentially, is the key.  Democracy belongs to the little people and their communities, not Washington or Westminster.  And because there are now such large populations everywhere, the administrative area has become too large to be governed by anything other than draconian methods.  The connection ‘of, by and for the people’ has been broken. Athenians didn’t vote; they chose by lot.  That did mean that sometimes they got a lousy lot of men governing, but that was balanced by occasionally getting a really good council – of men.  Of course, of men.  Only citizens’ names went into the pot; landless men, slaves and women didn’t come into it.  Not that much of a democracy, but a beginning.

Doubtless the whole matter now appear Utopian to present‑day “revolutionaries”. The point of view of ourselves in the World Socialist Movement does not coincide with the present policies of the various “radicals”. We even believe that their policies are, in many respects, reactionary, and often narrowly opportunist. World Socialists appeal to the reason of men and women who are capable of understanding, to urge them to utilise and spread abroad everything that is rational; everything that represents technical progress and helps to destroy the obstacles which impede the advance of the workers. We refuse to participate in any national fight, and recognise only the class struggle as necessary and profitable for the exploited workers, with the object of abolishing classes, national characteristics and all kinds of exploitation. We support everything which helps to annihilate differences between the peoples and which leads towards a rational economic organisation of the earth. We think that everything which mixes and welds the peoples together is good for humanity. We hold the firm conviction that only the exploited class, the workers, can be the historical force, which shall establish a society in which there shall be no nationalities and no exploitation. Not because the workers are essentially different in themselves from the members of other classes, but because their class struggle for emancipation urges them towards union on a world scale, and at the same time compels the exploiters unceasingly to perfect and rationalise the means of production.

Global capitalism is preparing a world culture but that does not mean that socialists advocate that people become all of one pattern. There will, indeed, be created a kind of uniformity in the mental outlook and character of men and women. National distinctions will pass away, but there will always be individual differences. And people, being able to come into contact with all parts of the world, having several hours free every day and the opportunity of devoting them to personal work and individual culture, one may reasonably suppose that from all this there will emerge strong personalities with original thoughts and feelings, which will find expression in various forms of art capable of being understood and appreciated throughout the entire world.

The vote is the people’s voice – Let it be heard – The Socialist Party is their megaphone