A world in chaos

Within today's society, capitalism simply creates scarcity and competition and this in turn creates many problems, such as starvation, homelessness, increased crime. You too are conditioned and molded, only more subtly. You are relentlessly bombarded with pro-establishment propaganda, images and emotional appeals all your life on every front. The narrow limits of your freedoms make you as broadly conformist as any army drill team. Socialism is a doctrine which threatens to pull the plug on their perverse system before it succeeds in destroying us, the environment, and the future of humanity.

The goals of our socialist society is a life free of exploitation, insecurity, deprivation; an end to unemployment, hunger and homelessness.  An end to racism, national oppression, anti-semitism and  of all forms of discrimination, prejudice and bigotry. An end to the unequal treatment of women, the young and the elderly and all those of another sexual orientation. The creation of a truly humane and rationally-planned society that will stimulate the fullest flowering of the personality, creativity and talent of the individual. We stand for socialism, a society that is run by and for the vast working-class majority, a society in which the needs of the mass of people come first, not the greed of a handful of mega-millionaires. The advocates of capitalism hold that such goals are utopian; that human beings are inherently greedy and selfish. A society based on satisfying human need is totally realistic. Others argue that these goals can be fully realised through reforms under capitalism. We are confident, however, that such goals can be realised - but only in a socialist society. History is a continuous story of people rising up against those who exploit and oppress them to demand what is theirs.

Capitalism has been fatally flawed. Its inherent laws - to maximise profit on the backs of the working class - gives rise to the class struggle. Capital is simply money and commodities assigned to create a profit and be reinvested. Profit is made by the “magical” addition of surplus value to the value inherent in the product. The “added value,” the profit, is produced by workers. And this capital is born to expand or die. To be useful, the investment must result not only in a profit but in a growing rate of profit. The value of a commodity comes from the labour invested in it, including the labor that manufactured the machinery and extracted the raw materials used to create the item. And the boss’s profits do not come from his smarts or his capital investment or his mark-up, but from the value created by labour—specifically, surplus-value. Surplus value derives from unpaid wages. The worker is never paid for the value of the product, only for the value of her or his labour time, which is considerably less, and which meanders widely depending upon the historical, cultural and social conditions of a country. Labour-power is miraculous, like the Virgin Birth. You get more out of it than you put in. Workers produce a commodity which has more value than what they get in wages to keep them functioning. This differential is surplus value, which is the source of capital. Marx pointed out the truly anarchistic nature of modern industrial capitalism—an irrational, disorganized hodgepodge operation that enormously rewards price-fixers, crooks, gangsters, exploiters, con artists, gamblers, stock manipulators, and all manner of corruption.

The secret of value, the labour theory of value, that was unearthed by the classical economists and by Marx is what the money barons fear and hate. It is the secret that will set the world free. People will learn how to control the supposedly sacred, eternal, inscrutable method of production and distribution that now controls us. Socialists will produce for use according to a reasonable plan and without a thought for the odious notion of profit. And with no insatiable parasitic class to maintain, socialist society will produce abundance for all. In place of this conspiracy of chaos, socialism offers rational, democratic planning. In the place of the sham democracy offered by capitalism which maintains the dictatorship of the bosses over all of the most vital aspects, socialism demands the complete democratisation of social production. To the problem of homelessness, socialists propose a radical solution: allow the homeless access to the homes. How many people lost their job while factories stood idle and raw materials were dumped or allowed to rust? Another “extremist” solution: open the factories, let the workers in. Let them make the things that people need, let the people who need them acquire them.

This requirement to maximise profits, resulting from inter-capitalist competition, in turn unleashes an inexorably antagonistic dynamic between the capitalists, on the one hand, and their workers on the other. All of the things that workers want for themselves and their family – higher salaries, health benefits, lengthy, paid vacations, sick leave, pensions, etc. – can only be won at the expense of the capitalists’ profits. The more the workers succeed in pressing their interests, the lower the capitalists’ profits. Consequently, capitalists and workers find themselves in a perpetual state of war with one another. Sometimes this war is waged quietly, almost invisibly, as workers simply leave work early and let someone else punch them out on the time clock. But at other times these antagonistic relations erupt violently where workers battle police in order to defend their picket lines, defy court injunctions, and halt production until the owners are forced to their knees and concede to their demands. Tired of watching their real wages fall, tired of being told the company will leave the country every time they ask for a raise, tired of monotonous work, long working days, short vacations, and tyrannical bosses, tired of watching politicians pander to every whim of the rich at the expense of the public welfare, working people will rise up, seize society at its foundations and overturn the entire system with the overpowering strength that comes when the immense majority of the population, act in their own interests and in the interests of all the oppressed members of society. “The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interests of the immense majority.” (Communist Manifesto)

We say that it may be possible to bring socialism through peaceful means through the ballot box. We stand in elections but we are different to other parties. Join us for a better world. We believe that the people — in the workplaces, on the streets, in our communities — have the power to fundamentally change the way society is run. This dream is not only possible but necessary if our planet and its people are to survive. Under capitalism, we waste half our waking day frustrating our creative powers, degrading our abilities, and just plain bored. All our lives are spent shackled to the profits of the 1%. Imagine a world dedicated instead to human joy. A life in which most of our waking hours are devoted to acquiring the necessities to survive will give way to a life in which our physical needs are satisfied and we can proceed to develop our more spiritual talents: art, science, philosophy, literature, etc

“Let us finally imagine, for a change, an association of free men, working with the means of production held in common, and expending their many different forms of labor power in full self-consciousness as one single social force.” – Marx (Capital, Vol. 1)