Our Planet

 

The members of the Socialist Party are disbelievers in the private property and profit system. We advocate for a community for the common good, where nobody is the master, and all have an equal claim to the stock of social wealth they have collectively produced. 

If workers are drawn to ideas of common ownership they would do well to realise that there is a party which has stood uncompromisingly and unwaveringly for real common ownership and, more, real democratic control of the earth's natural and industrial resources – the Socialist Party. 

 They will find no aspiring leaders within the Socialist Party, slugging it out and making rash promises to the membership, only a membership of equals in which Party affairs are decided democratically by the membership.

It does not promote reforming capitalism or prostituting our principles on the high altar of opportunism as the Labour Party and the Left have been doing. We seek the abolition of capitalism and all it represents, replacing it with a system of society in which money has been abolished, class antagonism eradicated and in which each person has free access to the necessaries of life.

Any socialist will tell you of the insanity of modern production, of the great barrier to commonsensical productive methods and the use of natural resources in the service of humanity - namely profit - and of planned obsolescence and waste. One thing the establishment of world socialism will usher in is environmentally sustainable resources and eco-friendly productive processes and within a system in which the artificial barriers to production have been removed.

The root cause of the problems lies in the way society is organised – profits before people. Reformers always   talk about money – spend more, spend less, tax it, borrow it, lend it, find it – but they never talk about where it comes from. They never talk about the basic rules by which it is used.

They just assume that money is being made, and that they can adapt their policies to the rules of the money-making game. That is, they assume CAPITALISM.

And once you assume capitalism you end up defending it. You end up having to defend a society in which the majority of the population must sell their capacity to work to the tiny handful who own most of the wealth. You have to defend a society in which things can only happen if there is a profit to be made. In short, you are compelled to subscribe to the law of NO PROFIT, NO PRODUCTION.

And once you start defending capitalism you end up defending the capitalist class of your country against the capitalist class of others and their right to wage wars and use the workers as cannon fodder in the perennial conflict for profits.

And you end up defending the capitalist state and its coercive machinery, ready to rationalise the use of force and extra law and order measures to keep the workers in line.

In short, you are sucked into the sordid world of class treachery and that is exactly what it is; for Labour, Nationalist, and Conservative candidates all subscribe to the view that there can be no alternative system to capitalism and that we should just get on with accepting it and making the most of it and that if only they are elected they can make this outmoded, anarchic and exploitative system work better than their counterparts.

But they also know that local councils have budgets that must be adhered to, that contracts need to go out to compulsory competitive tendering where the cheapest work contract must be sought, and that if the council is feeling its finances under pressure workers must be made redundant, that community centres, school and old persons’ homes will be shut. In short, they all are aware of the golden rule of the system they aim to manage and which they want us to support via a vote for them – profit before people. The rule applies locally, nationally and internationally. It’s accompanied by another golden rule – can’t pay can’t have even if the corollary is homelessness, prison, starvation or even suicide.

In a world of potential abundance, a world in which we are so scientifically and technologically advanced as to be able to supply every human on the planet with a decent standard of living, the mainstream councillors ask us to vote for their system of rationing, artificial scarcity and uncertainty.

They ask us to vote for a system of class and privilege balanced in favour of those who have the most and control access to life's necessities. When you think about it, they’re asking quite a lot of us.

As socialists, we make no promises or suggest how local authority budgets are best juggled. Socialists are against the concept of leadership and we rather feel that there is nothing we can do for the exploited majority that they are not already more than capable of doing for themselves. And rather than managing budgets and attempting to make capitalism “work”, we’re into abolishing the money-profit-wages system. We’re after a world without buying and selling and exchange, in which production is not balanced beforehand against how much profit is likely to be made. We’re campaigning for a system of society in which we have free access to the benefits of civilisation. We give freely of our abilities and take freely from the stockpile of communal wealth according to our needs. We’re into establishing a system of society in which we each have a free and democratic say in all the decisions that affect us.

However, voting for socialism is a step in the right direction and at last, puts the ‘real issue’ on the political agenda. So, at the end of the day it is up to you, the elector, as a member of the waged and salaried class, the exploited class. It is up to you to decide whether you favour the present system or the rationally organised system we describe as socialism. It’s up to you to decide whether you wish to join with others in seizing control of your own destiny and to help fashion a world in your own interests, or forever delegate control of your life to the careerists in the mainstream parties who themselves will always be controlled by a higher force, the profit system. Only don’t take too long to think about it – in a world in which we face environmental catastrophe and global war that threatens every creature on the planet, the odds are increasingly stacked against the defenders of capitalism sorting out the myriad problems that threaten our existence.

In an age when we have the scientific and technological know-how to enable us to solve almost all our problems, it is indeed an indictment of capitalism that so many humans, living on a planet, seven-eighths of which is covered in water, have so little access to it. A sane, money-free society, in which the artificial constraints of profit have been removed from production, in which the satisfying of human needs is paramount, and in which people have free access to the benefits of civilisation. Needless to say, there is little criticism of capitalism or its insane production motives, nor a call for an end to a system that prioritises profit over human need. If you’re hungry in this world, it is because you lack the purchasing power to buy food. The golden law of capitalism as ever comes into play – “can’t pay, can’t have”. Poor people simply do not constitute a market; no profit can be had for them. It is far simpler and far more lucrative, to create an artificial shortage which maintains prices at a profitable level.  The acceptance of capitalism’s profit-orientated morality leads workers to the most extraordinary acts of self-damage. The establishment of socialism will see a new morality in the world, based on the assurance that wealth is to be produced for free human access and full human benefit. Socialism will be a society in which human interests take first place; only in an unavoidable extremity will anything be considered, let alone carried out, which would go against those interests. We can have that society now.