We only win, when everyone wins.

We cannot begin the work of building new economic systems until we take off the mental shackles of the old ones. Anthropologists tell us that for most of human history we lived in small egalitarian societies that rewarded co-operation and sharing and punished selfishness and accumulation. No one is saying we should return to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, but it’s an indicator of what’s possible for human nature – in fact, we have over 90,000 years of inspiration of what is possible. All we lack is the confidence to see beyond the constraints of the education and indoctrination we have received. There are new ideas arising all around the world that point to a better way. Ideas abound. The decision is ours to reclaim our past and our future. Will we continue with the status quo, regardless of the inevitable destruction it will guarantee? Or will we create the better world we know is possible? If we are to fight back, we must bring together diverse movements working for social change and set ourselves upon an agreed goal. Connecting issues and social movements and organizations to each other has the potential to build a powerful movement of movements that is stronger than any of its individual parts. This means educating ourselves and in our groups about these issues and their causes and their interconnection. We don’t need calls for repairing the system; instead, we need a new system

Wealth inequality has reached truly epic proportions. In 2011, 110 of the 175 largest global economic entities on earth were corporations, with the corporate sector representing a clear majority (over 60 percent) over countries. The revenues of Royal Dutch Shell, for instance, were on par with the GDP of Norway and dwarfed the GDP of Thailand, Denmark or Venezuela. In other words, more economic power is in private hands than public. Most corporations started the globalization process by exploiting human labor where it was cheapest and the rules were the slackest. The rich are rich because they grab land and natural resources, and exploit the human labor of the poor.  We will only be able to eliminate poverty once we stop this plunder. We are told that as the rich get richer the rest of us will get richer too.  But we know now that this is a lie. Average wages are lower today than they were in the 1960s, and household incomes are stagnating while the 1% are growing richer than ever before.

We believe that governments run the world and that those governments are democratic.  But the most powerful entities on earth are corporations, not governments, run for private profit, not for public good.  And these corporations exercise undue influence over government policies.  It is a system where money buys votes. The hopes and desires of the majority are rarely considered. Capitalism driven by the relentless search for profits is destroying the environment. The truth is that our current system allows pretty much every corporation to externalise both environmental and social costs. Capitalism turns natural resources into commodities in order to attract more capital. That’s its sole purpose. The hallmark of capitalism is poverty in the midst of plenty. Capitalism has generated massive increases in productivity and extravagant wealth for some, yet many people still struggle to make ends meet. The idea that capitalism can be rendered a benign social order in which ordinary people can live flourishing, meaningful lives is ultimately an illusion because, at its core, capitalism cannot be reformed. The idea of taming capitalism does not eliminate the tendency for capitalism to generate harm; it simply ameliorates their effects. This is like a palliative medicine which deals with symptoms rather than with the underlying causes of a health problem. The idea of eroding capitalism supposes that cooperatives and worker-owned businesses have the potential, in the long run, of expanding to the point where capitalism is out-competed and supplanted from its dominance. It is far-fetched and implausible that within an economy dominated by capitalism an alternative could ever really displace capitalism, given the immense power and wealth of large capitalist corporations. If so-called non-capitalist emancipatory forms of economic activities and relations ever grew to the point of threatening the dominance of capitalism, they would simply be crushed on the very uneven playing field of commerce and by the State. The only hope is to sweep capitalism away and then build an emancipatory alternative.

Imagine an economy without bosses. It’s not a utopian vision. The Socialist Party are people who do not resign ourselves to the fate we are so often told is inevitable. We are people who refuse to continue as slaves. We are people who are remembering how to be human beings. We are people who are ready to reclaim our own lives. We are people who have realised that unless it is stopped, capitalism will kill everything on the planet. We are ready to fight back. And we are going to win. The greatest problem we have is that we can’t imagine any alternative to capitalism. And that is our challenge, to make a post-capitalist society tangible. The Socialist Party aim to build a peaceful, people-powered revolution. Our objective is to help shift public perception towards true progress, creating the framework for a society that benefits the many and not the few. It will take a collective effort of shared resources and ideas to restructure our world.