Socialism - a future for all life on Earth.

Poverty is a violence inflicted by capitalism upon the working class. It brings, as we all know, economic distress, malnutrition, sexism and family disruption, racial divide, national chauvinism and above all demoralisation. Capitalism has only one function and that is to employ and exploit workers for profit.  To exact the greatest amount of profit from workers more and more is the worker made the appendage of the machine and the machines become more costly as the employers vie with each other and their foreign counterparts for a greater share of the markets which depends on production costs being competitive. Thus productivity levels and new technology has become something to be almost worshipped. Technology is, in fact, the creation of the working class. It derives from the skill and the labour of workers whether they be employed in tool-room, drawing office, laboratory, computer departments, or production lines. But the employing class owns it and appropriates the benefits for itself. The manner in which this technology is used in the form of ever more sophisticated machines and plant, the competition to be ahead in the never-ending struggle for markets and hence profit has led to what goes along with increased technology, the growth of giant companies brought about by takeovers and mergers which concentrate capital in fewer hands and put more and more machinery behind fewer and fewer workers. When the term “automation” was coined the social theorists of the capitalist system pontificated about the problems confronting the workers in the greater use of leisure time. In fact the problem has been quite different.

Parliament is an instrument of capitalist class rule. This holds true regardless of the incumbent in Downing Street. To say otherwise is a denial of all historical fact. Whichever party is set to treat the ill they use the same medicine, only varying to some degree the manner of administering it. Were their motives of the highest, and they are not, it would make no difference.  They have no faith in the working class to solve their own problems. 

There will be no future for any of us, socialist or otherwise if global warming is permitted to drastically change the climate. The planet may well not survive environmental collapse before socialism can be established and begin to counter-act its effects. Capitalism cannot save the planet because it sees its natural resources only as commodities to make profits.  But it is not a foregone conclusion that socialism will not be achieved before all the tipping points arrive. Undoing climate change means undoing the commodification of Earth. Capitalism is not a system designed for meeting the needs of human beings. Capitalism is a system that serves capital, and nothing else, certainly not humanity's.  It is possible to meet all the needs of humanity and still allow for the needs of nature, as well. Capitalism cannot do it because it must continuously expand its markets to create new needs for people, in order to extract profit from them. We can protect the planet while maintaining our electricity, medicine, learning, and leisure. Calls to abandon civilisation entirely are doomed to failure.  Those who seek solutions in anti-human and usually racist calls for population control are denying that resources are available for all sections of the population. A socialist society has the capacity to create a  future for all life on Earth. 

Most people used to expect that life in capitalism would inevitably get better: incomes would grow, jobs are more secure and safety at work improve, yet the opposite is happening. Those expectations simply didn’t take into account capitalism’s built-in drive for profit and the competition it brings in its wake. It is the Socialist Party's argument that working-class problems can only be solved by abolishing capitalism, and capitalism can only be abolished after a majority of the population have been won over to want it abolished.  Capitalism masquerading as socialism is a fruit which the workers will find less enticing in future. We seize the opportunity to show that capitalism’s contradictions can only disappear in socialism. Chaos and capitalism go together because of the anarchy of the market mechanism.  At the moment the capitalist economy is in a period of profound disequilibrium and most of the indicators show that it will get worse before it gets better. There is still too much capital seeking not enough profit, leading to unsustainable and potentially catastrophic flights into speculation in the stock and currency markets. The stock markets are in particular danger with another crash a definite possibility, which would see masses of unprofitable capital go to the wall and huge liquidation of existing debts, the primary conditions in fact for a sustainable recovery. The immediate prospects for wage earners pinning their hopes on a recovery don't look good. It would be far better for them to work for the complete abolition of booms and slumps, together with their cause — capitalism.