For a New World

Capitalism is a system that can never work in the interest of the wage and salary earning majority. Certainly, in its periods of expansion, workers can expect rising wages (even if this is offset by having to work more and more intensively) but such periods of expansion are only one side of the coin. Capitalism does not, and cannot, expand in a smooth and continuous way; its growth pattern is one of fits and starts, of alternating periods of expansion and contraction (booms and slumps). The other side of a period of expansion and rising wages is the period of contraction and falling wages which inevitably follows it. Since trade unions exist to try to defend workers’ wages and conditions, it is only natural that the trade unions should have tried to resist governments intention to reduce real wages.

 Wages—real wages, that is, what they can buy—tend to fall in a recession because the increased unemployment or in modern times, underemployment, such as zero-hour contracts in the gig economy and increasing part-time work turns labour market conditions more in favour of employers. Supply of labour power comes to exceed demand so, as always happens in such circumstances, its price (wages and salaries) tends to fall. Workers can, by trade union organisation and action, slow down this tendency but they can’t reverse or even halt it. Thus in Britain over the past few years trade unions have been forced to settle for “increases” below the level of inflation and the rise of the cost of living. Trade unions should resist such a blatant, frontal attack on their members living standards. However, they should have no illusions. Under capitalism, even in times of expan­sion and boom, the cards are stacked in favour of the employers who are in the dominant bargaining position because they own the means of wealth production. In these circumstances, the most that unions can achieve is to slow down the fall in real wages, to limit the damage. One thing, however, is clear: if workers sit back and do nothing they may well lose more than if they stand up and strike.

Society today is characterised by a growing awareness of the widening gap between rich and poor. Outrage at the massive salaries and share option schemes awarded to those who run various industries has become commonplace. The question of CEO pay and bonuses has not only enraged thousands of people – it has also exposed how the market is rigged to deliver huge pay increases for those at the top and how governments have failed to curb those boardroom excesses.  The issue of CEO pay has exposed the existence of huge wealth in society, which exists independently of the policies of any particular government. The extent of the personal wealth of the rich is unimaginable to most people.

 The people who own the wealth in society are not, however, just a collection of individuals – they form a ruling class - the capitalists. Capitalism is a system which is constantly evolving. In the early 19th century an individual capitalist, or family group, would own a business. Modern corporations have broken the link between capital and its individual owner. Control of capitalism has outgrown the limitations of individual ownership and become institutionalised. Complex hierarchies of management are a product of these changes. The structure of management is parallel to that of production – management functions are carried out by workers, controlled by supervisors (senior management) and CEOs proper.

People know that capitalism is no good but few can see a way forward to a better type of society.  It is essential to generate interest in the idea of socialism. To achieve this aim we are spreading knowledge of the revolutionary outlook of Marxism among the working class. It is through political action that we reach out to people with our socialist message that socialism is rule by the working people. They will decide how socialism is to work. This was how Marx and Engels defined socialism. To use the word “socialism” for anything but working people’s power is to misuse the term. Nationalisation of mines, railways, steel, etc. is not socialism, nor does this constitutes the socialist sector of a mixed economy. Such nationalisation is simply state capitalism, with no relation to socialism. Nor is the “Welfare State” socialist. “Welfare”, in capitalist terms, is to improve the efficiency of that state as a profit-maker, is not socialism but another form of state capitalism. It can be an improvement on capitalism with no welfare, just as a 40-hour week is an improvement on a 60-hour week. But it is not socialism. (A “Welfare State” also inevitably turns into the "Means Test State".) We live in a world dominated by capitalism, a system which allows a small minority of capitalists to oppress and exploit the great majority of humankind.  It is capitalism that brings about great inequalities in living standards with more poor people now in the world than ever before, starts murderous imperialist wars to steal the resources of less developed countries and causes the growing devastation of our natural environment.  Either we get rid of this outmoded and increasingly decrepit system or it will devastate humanity.  The hour is late and urgent action is necessary.

The only viable way forward to achieve socialism, a class-free and state-free society on a world scale where people do not oppress and exploit each other and where we live in harmony with our natural environment.  To create socialism it is necessary to overthrow the rule of capitalism and this can be done only through a social revolution.  The working class depose the capitalist ruling class and establish socialism and the reconstruction of society. There are many unanswered questions concerning the correct road toward No one set of ideas, including our own have resolved the problem of a lack of class consciousness among our fellow-workers. But many of the Socialist Party's ideas form the basis of the solution needed in the development of a class-free society. The source of men and women’s oppression lies in the private ownership of the means of production. The capitalist system is the enemy of men and women, and it is only through a socialist revolution and the abolition of the private ownership of the means of production and the building of socialism, that the exploitation of the working class can disappear. The complete emancipation of humanity is only possible in a classless society – socialism. It is principally the task of men and women to take their fate into their own hands since their liberation can only be won through their own efforts.

For all the weaknesses of the working class, and of the socialist movement, there is the element of realism to socialism that is absent in what its critics say. Take the learned men of academia who speak so disdainfully of socialism’s past and contemptuously of its future, telling us that  Socialism is irrelevant! It is utopian!"  But politics is concerned with alternatives so what do they have to propose instead? In nine out of ten cases, it boils down to what we now have: an administration run by the alternating corrupt pro-capitalist parties, more utopian, absurd and irrelevant as even a beginning of a solution to the world's problems.