Stop being slavishly philanthropic

The Socialist Party stands dedicated to achieving the following objective:

"The establishment of a system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interest of the whole community."

This post-capitalist society of equals, will not require rationing of access to social wealth, via waged slavery, based upon ability to pay for them, but will proceed from a production for use, free access principle of:

"From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs."

We are speaking of socialism as it was envisaged by Morris, Marx, Tressell, Luxemburg et al, indeed before reformist delusions that capitalism could be reformed took hold of and limited left-wing political aspirations. We wouldn't need any governments over us in a classless society and the causes of war would also disappear along with the competition for raw materials, trade routes, markets and spheres of geo-political interests. No system is forever and we are advocating moving onto a transformation of the mode of production and distribution, which utilises the productive capacity of capitalism to satisfy human needs with free access. This is presently squandered by wasteful competition, in the interests of elites, leading to war and impoverishment for the many, with absolute and relative poverty rations (wages), in the pursuit of exploitation of the producer class for profit. What forms the post-capitalist society will take will be determined by the means used. A bottom up democratic revolution by the immense majority will be different from any previous minority led ones which inevitably lead to a mere replacement of rulers and ruled. The ends (a classless free access, socially equal society) 'determined by the means', rather than the ends having to be' justified' by obfuscatory apologetics on behalf of a new governing elite. The option is socialism or barbarism. The Socialist Party fully committed to the democratic road towards abolishing the wages system and establishing a commonly owned world of true social equality without the need of governments 'over' the people, as when all is owned in common and controlled democratically by all as social equals, there are no elite interests to be served by governance. War and poverty, absolute or relative are essential concomitants of the capitalist economic system. The nation state is a capitalist entity Workers have no country but a world to win.

Exploitation takes place at the very point of production where workers produce a surplus value over and above their waged ration. Otherwise why would an employer hire someone if they could not extract surplus value? Their condition, of waged slavery, in order to access the means of living, ensures they can never be free until capitalism is replaced by a post-capitalist democratic revolution, which transforms production of commodities for sale at a profit for the parasitic capitalist class, into production of utilities, for the use of all and abolishes waged slavery and price mechanisms, replacing them with a free access commonly owned democratically controlled world of social equality. Housing, food, clothing indeed all the means of living a useful and happy life should be as freely available as tap water was before they privatised even that.

The lesson in the ‘The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists’ by Robert Tressell, is workers need to combine, stop being slavishly philanthropic and providing the wealth for a parasitic minority employer class, take all wealth into common ownership and democratic control, abolish the wages system, wage slavery and establish a free access society. We only have to remove ownership and control by, corporations, states, private individuals and replace it with common ownership by us all, with production for use. Then we can proceed immediately to having free access to the commonly owned wealth thus dispensing with money and all the paraphernalia which goes with money. Abolish wages and prices, with a commonly owned, production for use society.

The Labour party is not and never has been a socialist party. The Labour party is just another business friendly capitalist political party. They do not represent workers, but are a sort of reformist capitalist government 'over' workers. There is no such thing as a 'socialist government'. If you have government you have a class society. State ownership is not common ownership and leaves your relationship to the means of production and distribution unchanged. In other words you will still be a wage slave in relative or absolute poverty and still have a ruling class in relative ease and affluence from your production of surplus value over and above your waged ration. Government only exists to serve to maintain the dominance of the parasite class over this process. To safeguard their ownership, to protect them from each other) monopoly commissions etc), the war machine, and make rules pretending to level playing fields.

There is no such thing as "a fair day's pay for a fair day's work". This is a myth. Exploitation takes place at the point of production. Wages are but a 'ration' allocated to workers in return for their mental and physical energies engaged upon creating vast surpluses for the parasite capitalist class. No, it has nothing to do with immigration and everything to do with profitability of the capitalist class allied with a lack of workers action in the class struggle to drive wages up. The capitalist class already exported many of those jobs within the global capitalist system which prevails today. Most immigrants work in areas where there is a shortage of labour supply.

A capitalist is someone who possesses sufficient capital to enable him or her to live off the proceeds of his or her investments. Exploitation is both qualitative and quantitative. We are speaking of a money-based market type of economy. But expropriating in this case means taking all the means and instruments of production and distribution into common ownership and establishing production for use of all and not for sale, rather than some redistributive monetised transaction, so pensions, bonuses, and any dividends would be irrelevant in those circumstances along with insurance etc. with the will of the majority prevailing. You have not move away from imagining capitalist distributive methods and managed scarcity, onto the post-capitalist society ,and managed superabundance , in relative and actual terms arising out of production for use.

Human needs will be 'self-assessed'. As we are not calculating how many hours we have to work in order to qualify for my food ration here. Is a teacher's belly more needful of gateaux than the school janitors. With the freeing up of individuals form the transactions of the money based present economy, banks, insurance, we will have a much increased availability of labour to volunteer for positions in teaching so the problem will be satisfying leisure activities, as work and play become indistinguishable in some presently high pressured occupations, such as teaching.  Education can be for living rather than for work. Human nature is the weakest argument you could use. It would be in the self interest of all to maintain a world without war, poverty etc. Calculation in kind already goes on inside capitalism with substitution where necessary.

If we proceed form a society with competition and scarcity with accumulation as its watchword then we can indeed expect innumerable examples of human behaviour shaped by this environment despite that human behaviour time and time again asserts its co-operative nature. (millions already volunteer either as cooperative organised ventures or in individual neighbourly acts of human kindness ) so human nature doesn't really exist as a counter to a cooperative socialist society of social equals, in an equal relationship with everyone else to the means and instruments foe producing and distributing wealth within a production for use society, except as a malleable human behaviour.

With the removal of private, corporate and state ownership of resources and the establishment of real common ownership, the functions of government become superfluous. Resources can then be administered locally , regionally and globally where necessary, by the people best placed to see what is needed at the points of production and distribution in an interactive vertical feedback loop utilising information technology and barcodes, without the necessity for price tags with calculation in 'kind', rather than the economic calculation in 'superfluous' prices enabling self-actuating stock controls, to ensure 'actual' human needs are satisfied rather than as at present, 'artificial' market demands.

Wee Matt