Capitalist wealth or a Commonwealth?

Most workers find it hard to imagine how mankind could possibly live without money. Some argue that we must have money because we have always had money. Men have therefore become obsessed with money, which has attained the position of a god, since it is money which, in the capitalist system, becomes the real life power. Without it men and women must starve. But what of money in the next stage of human evolution — Socialism? Why should it not still be required? When men produce for their own needs, and not for the benefit of a handful of exploiters as they have done since primitive times, when national boundaries disappear and the world’s wealth is owned in common, when competition gives way to cooperation, then exchange relationships disappear. And so, as money can only exist in a private society, it must vanish with private property.

Capitalism may sometimes be depicted as civilised, but it is by nature predatory and cannot be tamed. Capitalism has long functioned without a conscience. The basis of capitalism is the ceaseless struggle between the "haves" and the “have-nots". Socialism embodies a future more humane and liberating than what many imagine possible.

Rather than changing the configuration of the pieces creating the climate problem, change the world instead. The problem is capitalism, not corporations per se. And the problem with capitalism is political, not technological. Geo-engineering solutions to climate change address the problem in isolation and provide no indication that the unsolvable problem of unintended consequences is understood.

The Socialist Party is often accused, when we argue with the Left and reformers, of splitting the workers. They claim it would better serve the interests of socialism if we stopped being puritans and joined them in the day-to-day campaigns. Our answer to these assertions is, and always has been, that we will join with any organisation provided it devotes its activities entirely to socialism. For us socialism can have only one meaning; i.e., a system of living under which the means of production-land, factories and machinery, etc., are in the COMMON holding of the WHOLE community. The wages system will cease to exist, there will be no classes, and instead of buying and selling for the profit of the few, goods and services will be freely available for USE by all. We further hold that this can only arise as the result of the conscious political triumph of the world working-class in their struggle against their only real enemy, the world capitalist class.

While the left wingers clamour for a change of government, we concern ourselves with what really matters, not a change of office boys, but a change of system.We maintain that the wages system the world over is proof of workers being exploited, either for the benefit of private shareholders or government bondholders. It is a fundamental difference between ourselves and all other parties that they embrace LEADERSHIP while we reject it. Workers only need leaders while they do not, know either the objective or the method; no “spearhead” or “thinking minority” can ever lead the working-class to Socialism, because leadership implies the ignorance of the followers. Like Marx and Engels, we have always maintained that the movement for Socialism is the “conscious movement of the immense majority in the interest of the immense majority.” (Communist Manifesto).

We find our work of propagating Socialism made very much harder by the confusion spread amongst workers by these “left wingers.”

"Freedom” has been the battle cry in countless revolutions and revolts throughout the ages, and recent events across the World but presently in the situation of the Kurdish against Turkey must have recalled past sacrifices immortalised by poets, such as Byron's “Yet, Freedom! yet thy banner, torn but flying, streams like the thunderstorm against the wind.” At the present time the conscience of the world is being stirred by the heroic but unequal struggle of the Kurds against the might of the Turks. The iron fist closes and the rebels drown in their own blood as another paragraph is completed in the history of Middle East —another event in a chapter of foreign invasions. Western media have mostly made statements sympathetic to the rebels. The tragic bravery of the Kurdish should not blind the workers to the fact that it is not in their interest to support the struggle of either.

We believe that you share our concern for the well-being of people in our society, and for the welfare of the planet itself. As members of a long-established independent democratic movement which seeks by persuasion and world-wide peaceful political organisation to transform our present society into one fit for humankind. we say the problems of our world cannot be solved within the existing structures of production and government. Our world is divided into national areas dominated by class minorities in each country, which, either by private or corporate ownership or by state bureaucratic parties monopolise the means of production. These ruling classes and their political representatives, by reason of a combination of historical circumstances, governmental, military and ideological control or influence, are able to keep the majority of the world's population in subjection. In the decisive areas of the world this domination takes the form of people being denied access to the means of living except on the basis of working for a wage or salary. In the major countries of the world, the people who, in the widest sense, produce what we need to live, are wage-slaves. 

Our access to food, clothing, shelter and other needs is rationed by money. It is a world-system based upon the class monopoly of the means of production where things are produced and services rendered as commodities for sale at a profit. Labour-power also is a commodity: its price is what we receive as a wage or salary. Each enterprise or grouping of capitalism, in competition with others in the market, must strive to increase the profit surplus which it makes after the investment of capital. If it fails to achieve sufficient profit to re-invest in new machinery and techniques it will lose out to more powerful groupings or nations.

The class interests, values and drive for profit of the world-system have been the underlying reasons for the unprecedented destruction of life and resources throughout this century. This appalling process, made worse by new forms of pollution, including the spread of artificial radio-activity and the cutting-down of the rain forests, to say nothing of the possible effects of secret weapons, the existence of which it is reasonable to assume. This uncontrolled madness will continue unless we take the necessary democratic action to transform our way of life throughout the planet.

We believe that socialism can only be brought about by an overwhelming majority of the population, a majority which understands why capitalism must be replaced by socialism. If we are to bring into being production solely for use. where needs are self-determined, we must have a clear idea of how such a society could be established, organised and sustained. We must also ensure that the values and methods of the World Socialist Movement are fully consistent with its aims.

Socialism is a new world society where the means of production are commonly owned and where governments and systems of exchange, whether barter or money, have been replaced by democratic administration at local, regional and world levels: a society where there could be decentralised co-ordination of production with free access according to need.

Organise for a Better Life

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