End Capitalism Now

The Socialist Party of Great Britain, a party of the World Socialist Movement, addresses itself to fellow workers. We stand for a socialised economy in which the profit system will be replaced by the cooperation of people. If you don't want a classless world of common ownership then the Socialist Party doesn't want your support.

 Between droughts and floods, it appears that vast sections of this planet are becoming uninhabitable. Millions of people are driven from their homes and plunged into dire suffering before the onslaughts of nature. While we call it `nature’, it is well known that behind the present destructive developments of natural forces, lies the responsibility of the capitalist class. This planet has been a great treasure house of nature, which the capitalists the owners of the natural resources, have despoiled. The environmental ravages of today are directly traceable to their activities. They cut down the forests and made great profits in selling timber and raising cattle or soya. With the forests has gone the undergrowth and root-system and thus the soil has been deprived of the natural spongy character it originally possessed, which absorbed the excess water of melting snows and spring rain. Hence, the floods which now afflict many parts of the land.  The great industrialised monoculture farms have been stripped of their natural protective covering of grasses in order to plant great fields of grain and then sprayed with fertilizer and pesticides. The top soil, necessary, has been blown or washed away.  Scientists do not hesitate to show that capitalism has destroyed the, has reduced the size of the lakes, has eroded the soil, has dried up the rivers and so forth.

Temperatures today are far more severe and subject to more violent changes than ever before. The dire results of the capitalists’ wastefulness and destruction are now effecting capitalist property as well as working class lives so now some governments are sitting up and taking. Private property must be protected. But any plan undertaken today to cope can only be based profits, not in the benefit of humanity as a whole. Such capitalist planning can be carried out only at the expense of the working class and by means of the exploitation of the working class. It is not for us to propose plans for the capitalists to solve their problems, nor to support any of their plans. We know that when the workers of this country take over the means of production, they will inherit the aftermath of capitalist mismanagement. But they will be able then to tackle these problems in the interests of humanity as a whole, not of a tiny minority. Science will then be freed from the main functions, which are shackling it today, namely profit making and warfare and full face can be turned to solving the ills that beset mankind. It will be understood then that natural resources will be treasured and used carefully. The great cities, those urban-centres of today, will disappear and with them the barren, unproductive waste-lands. The ancient harmony between man and nature will be restored, but on a much higher plane in which man will not be the victim of nature but its steward and trustee.

Today this profit system is old and decrepit, infected by incurable diseases, demented by delusions of grandeur and vain hopes that it can succeed in solving its ailments. The cure is not easy, and anyone who thinks it is, will be fooling him or herself. These are not easy times in which to make progress. The nature of the struggle is political. Socialist will not remain a minority; because our ideas conform to reality and are right, they will attract the majority of the people, and they will triumph. The ruling class cannot stop ideas or their spread because it cannot do away with the conditions of life that produce those ideas and it cannot prevent the rise of new generations of activists whom the future rests and who will not want the future to be like the past. Our confidence in the future is not the result of wishful thinking or of an ability to delude ourselves, but the product of study and understanding of society and history and the class struggle. Some people believe it is hopelessly impractical and idealistic to continue a struggle to end capitalism against such seemingly great odds yet experience with capitalism is going to have consequences. It is going to teach the people that if they want to survive, capitalism must die

 and that if they want peace and dignity they will first have to take power away from the capitalists. It is not the Socialist Party, primarily, who will teach these things, but capitalism itself. We’re educating all whom we can reach to the best of our ability — but capitalism is educating them too and in a way that will have deeper, more lasting, profound and revolutionary effects than any words we can speak or write. Whether they like it or not, capitalism is forced to continue to produce all kinds of opportunities for awakening people and driving them into a struggle against the conditions they endure. If socialists know how to stick to their guns and seize the opportunities offered them, then they will win over to their side all the other workers and then it will be goodbye forever to capitalism.