Our party is the party of the revolution

The political control that the working class will acquire as a result of socialist knowledge, including control of the armed forces, will be acquired only when they gain such knowledge, and, therefore, cease to support capitalist agents. There will then be no power available for use by the master class that could prevent an organised majority of workers from using the present political machinery to establish socialism. The nature of capitalism and the remorseless and ruthlessly brutal nature of the pillaging pirates who exploit them will have to be brought home in a very clear manner to a very large number of workers before a socialist society becomes a nearer possibility.

The presence of an economically exploiting class is not always easy to discern. What is plain for all to observe is the wages system and the buying and selling of commodities; essential features of capitalism and definite pointers to the existence of an exploiting and governing class, who own the means by which all live. The wages contract safeguards this ownership by ensuring that the workers remain — as they have always been — propertyless, and that they are paid only the equivalent (in wages) of the labour it takes them to reproduce their own energies and support their families. The workers’ labour power, or energy, produces a value greater than itself, i.e. more labour (work done) for which no equivalent is paid. In the selling of commodities, the unpaid labour is realised as a sum of money (profit) and is appropriated by the privileged class. The profit is shared out among investors, bankers, landlords, and sometimes small owner-employers.

In the former state-capitalist countries ruled by the Communist Party, surplus value is appropriated as we have just described with reference to the West, but the ’face' of things is different. Instead of nationalisation of just a few industries as in this country, all industry is government owned and controlled. The ‘share-out’ is among Communist Party and government officials who appropriate profit in the form of their own bloated ‘salaries’ or bonuses. Because of the way in which the capitalist system works, the ruling class of any country is not a free agent but is subject to certain pressures which act on it remorselessly. It must compete with rival ruling groups for markets and supplies of raw materials and, such is the pace of industrial innovation in the modem world, it must continually accumulate capital — and at an ever-increasing rate.

“...the development of capitalist production makes it constantly necessary to keep increasing the amount of capital laid out in a given industrial undertaking, and competition makes the immanent laws of capitalist production to be felt by each individual capitalist, as external coercive laws. It compels him to keep constantly extending his capital, in order to preserve it, but extend it he cannot except by means of progressive accumulation...” (Capital, Vol. I.).

Today these same pressures can best be seen acting on whole industries and on entire national capitals, since capitalist development has virtually eliminated the individual factory owner of Marx's day. Faced with this inescapable need to accumulate capital, the rulers of any country have only one way in which they can act — just like the 19th-century mine master or steel lord they must attempt to increase the amount of surplus value they are wringing out of the working class. The aim is to build up industry and to mechanise agriculture and this is being achieved by screwing down the working class.

The Socialist Party has always held that political power should be used to establish Socialism. In other words the state machine, which is the public power of coercion, will be used to force the capitalists to give up their privileges and hand over their wealth to the community. Whether or not this use of political power will involve actual physical violence — the setting in motion of the armed forces, the firing of guns and the killing of people — will depend entirely on the reaction of any pro-capitalist minority at the time of the socialist victory at the polls.

We think it unlikely that, faced with a determined socialist majority in control of political power, a small pro-capitalist minority would be so foolish as to take up arms to prevent the establishment of socialism. But if a violent minority tried to prevent the implementation of a democratically expressed will for socialism, then the socialist majority would have to use violence against them. As the old Chartist and socialist slogan put it: "Peaceably if we may; forcibly if we must”.

ABOLISH THE OWNERSHIP OF THE MEANS OF LIFE BY THE BOSS CLASS.

There is not a single country where socialism has been realised, though over a century has passed since Marx and Engels made public the Communist Manifesto. Capitalism still remains.

 Capitalists are very cunning. They leave no stone un-turned to maintain their position. Here lies one of the major reasons why revolution does not break out. Our revolutionary goal shapes our policy in the daily struggle. We have to stand up and fight for the true interests of the working class as a whole, at every turn of the road. It is our duty to the working class to make such a fight. We would not be worthy of the proud name our party bears if we evaded such a fight on any pretext. The reason for this is that ours is the only party willing to fight for the immediate interests of the workers, and the only party standing for the solution of the labour problem by means of the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism. All of the interests of the working class, immediately and ultimately, are indissolubly bound up with the revolution. 

We have set up the theory of the salvation of the workers through uncompromising struggle against their exploiters. Our fight is to organise workers together on the basis of the class struggle. Therefore, they must be enlightened as to our aims and plans. We are fighting for their minds and hearts. Do not forget that. We must adopt the point of view that our struggle is a struggle to develop the class consciousness of the workers and to win them over to the principle of the revolutionary struggle against capitalism.

Our party is a party of workers, a party of struggle against capitalism and all its works. We are not progressives, but revolutionists. The test of our work can never be made by formal victories, but by the development of class consciousness among workers, the degree of their organisation on that basis. Many difficulties will confront us in the task we have undertaken, but, with the assistance of the party, we will solve them all. We will win over people to the side of socialism; we will wrest the labour movement from the hands of the bourgeoisie and convert them into mighty instruments for the socialist revolution. There are plenty of things in the movement that tend to discourage socialists who are striving to build an organisation that can actually serve as the instrument of the workers in their fight for power. Poverty and misery give birth and sustenance to religion. Solace for an empty stomach is often found by the wretched in the adoration of an icon.

We working people want to raise our wages, cut our hours, make our jobs safer and less injurious to our health and less unpleasant places in which to earn our living. If we realise what an injury the capitalist system does to us, we want also to get rid of it. We can not do these things by ourselves. We can do them together. The expression "rank-and-file" to which we refer are made most often by addicts of the "leadership principle." Now the "leadership principle"—the idea that we should pick and follow leaders, and seek a cure for our troubles by changing leaders—is the direct opposite to the Socialist Party's idea of organisation. It is indeed curious that those who advocate this style of organisation should ever demand "rank-and-file control." How does it happen? The object of these various political cults of "follow-the-leader" is to obtain more followers for their various leaders. And since every time there is a new leader there are new cults, this results in a rather bewildering situation.

 Since their purpose is not to organise a working class to do something for itself, but to make sure that the leaders of one cult are followed rather than the leaders of another, they seek their following chiefly in already organised groups of workers. Sometimes they try to secure such a following by currying favour with the officials of these unions. That was and is the pet policy of the Leninists and Trotskyists sects who vary this strategy with that of "boring from within" to grab the official positions. 

When a group of self-appointed saviours try to grab the official positions they resort to the favourite tricks of the politicians. They must charge the elected officials with "betraying their mandates," "not living up to their promises," "ignoring the wishes of the rank and file." They must promise that if they are elected, the "rank-and-file" will rule through them. As a result we have the strange spectacle of "rank-and-file" committees waiting instructions from some leader before they can decide upon their next step. To get into the saddle, these would-be leaders must convince their potential victims that they are now being ridden, but that with them in the saddle, they will no longer be ridden. It will not serve their purpose to urge that those who are being ridden should get rid of rider, saddle and all. They must urge that only the riders be changed. 

We Want An End To The Robbery By The Capitalists

Capitalism has become an obsolete oppressive system that ought to be got rid off. A very small minority at present recognise this and are consciously anti-capitalist, but the majority of people continue trying to find solutions within the system rather than by overthrowing it. So presently there is no real possibility of overthrowing that system and attempt to do so would degenerate into futile reformism and/or terrorism, whatever the “revolutionary” rhetoric. The Left devote themselves to advancing slogans like “Make the Rich Pay” that imply no intention to abolish capitalism. The Left is hardly capable of challenging the ruling class for power, let alone winning that challenge. The confusion of the Left is so great the likelihood of those existing “left” movements and ideologies will disintegrate completely means there will be room for something new and genuinely revolutionary to emerge to open the way for revolutionary socialists to fight for progress rather than reacting against capitalism.

It has been said often enough that there can be no blueprints for the future because the people themselves will decide how to build the new society as they are building it. Fundamentally the Socialist Party agree with that, and refrains from attempting to present any blueprints. Nevertheless, it is appropriate to put forward a few broad ideas to discuss what a revolutionary movement might do to start building socialism. Consistent refusal to do so suggests that we do not possess an alternative. “No blueprints” is often a cop-out excuse for “no ideas”. “Revolution” does not mean that we would “demand” that the multinationals do this or that. It means that we, the working class take over the running of industry and make the decisions ourselves. To eliminate many of the social problems we must to proceed with abolishing the market economy.

What is the meaning of workers’ control of production? First, it means the taking over not of a single industry, but of every plant of every branch of every industry, by democratically elected committees. It means the wresting of the means of production, which are the livelihood of the vast majority of the population, from the absentee owners. Workers’ control of production is replacing economic dictatorship with economic democracy, transferring social wealth to the producers of that wealth, the workers. Those who work on the production lines , who, together with their families and dependents, constitute the majority of the country, those who produce the wealth of the country but who are denied a say in the disposition of that wealth, those who are deprived of the fruits of their labour – they should run things. This would eventually eliminate all classes.

The Socialist Party is not a reform party, but a revolutionary party. It does not propose to modify the competitive system, but to abolish it. An examination of its principles shows that it stands unequivocally for the common ownership and control of all the means of wealth production and distribution — in a word, socialism. The Socialist Party is necessarily an world party linked together in the indissoluble bonds of international socialism. The battle cry of Marx is heard around the world: “Workingmen of all countries, unite; you have a world to gain! You have nothing to lose but your chains!” It is as wide as the domain of capitalism. It is everywhere and always the same. It takes no backward step. It refuses to be flattered, bribed, or otherwise deflected from the course mapped out by Marx and Engels.

 The Socialist Party has no interest in any of the so-called issues over which capitalist politicians fight sham battles. They care nothing about protectionism and free trade, Brexit or whatever. It stands first, last, and always for the common ownership of all the means of production and distribution, and will press forward unceasingly until they secure them, thereby liberating the human race. We call upon all who share the sentiments, to join the Socialist Party in the fight for a new, socialist society.

The people of the world are brothers and sisters

In a world of abundance, we suffer from serious shortages and chronic misery. We face a future that is very bleak indeed unless the system of exploitation is abolished and replaced with a new socialist system. It is responsibility of the Socialist Part to rally and inspire working people. We are mindful, at all times, to keep the forefront of all our activity: the need to to raise the socialist consciousness and convince fellow-workers of the necessity for socialist revolution. There is a silent reaction going on today, inexorable, unremitting, pitiless, and it is twisting lives of working people more harshly than many a battle fought on the field. Union after union, grown accustomed to a familiar routine, has suddenly found itself grabbed by the scruff of the neck, with all the complacency shaken out of its officials as they face the spectre of loss as of members, and years of hard-won achievements in the way of contracts, seniority accumulations, health and pension funds get taken from under them. Who is this implacable enemy that has appeared in our midst, and is spreading disaster in his wake? The media speak of new technology and artificial intelligence.

The signs of the growth of automation and increased robotics, the building up of new industrial centres, are everywhere. Everyone has heard of ‘automation’ by now and knows it is a new giant stride in the elimination of human labour in production by the use of computerised controls. We are entering a distinctly new economic era, a catastrophic second industrial revolution. Whereas an assembly line contained a hundred workers, with automation, this same line requires only a skeleton maintenance crew to service the machine. But this new technology so expensive, they require such enormous capital outlays, that even companies that were considered big 10-20 years ago are unable to raise that kind of investment today. Many will survive only by permitting themselves to get absorbed by the shrinking number of giants.

How are unions meeting this threat? What is the program of the ‘labor statesmen’ to protect the workingman’s equity in his job, his seniority and pension rights? How do the officers who head the big labour federations visualise the union’s role in the changing economy, and what new strategy or tactics have they devised to safeguard labour’s position and sustain labour’s strength? If you are looking for an answer to these questions from the labour leaders, you have come to the wrong place. They have no answer. All their elaborate research and legal departments and economic advisers notwithstanding, the union leaders are as bewildered as the man on the street. Their actions thus far have been a combination of panic. On the wage front the picture is a dismal one. The workers are so demoralised by the job uncertainty, unemployment, outsourcing and off-shoring of plants, and apparent weakness of the unions, that they breathe a sigh of relief when their leaders get them a any sort of increase without their having to strike for it. Labour sights and goals are getting cut down drastically in this period of reaction and retreat. But giving up rights won after years of hard struggles is no solution to anything. Labour cannot even hope by these methods to stabilise itself on a lower level. Wage cuts and more speed-up are not a prelude to happier labour-management relationships, but to new demands for more wage cuts and still more speed-up. The tactic of conceding wage cuts in order to make businesses ‘more competitive,’ 'job security' in the face of unemployment or temporary casual contracts and conditions, all this has to be stopped in a hurry. Otherwise, it will not be too many years before working people are on the receiving end of disaster. Workers cannot afford to mark time and just hope for things to turn for the better.

It is our duty as socialists to help guide along right lines the effort of the workers to choose the correct kind of organisation to fight their battles in that conflict. According as they choose aright or wrongly, so will the development of class consciousness in their minds be hastened or retarded by their everyday experience in class struggles. In their march to freedom the workers will use every weapon they find necessary. Tomorrow belongs to the people. But it can only do so if the people understand the present state of society and, understanding it, change it. This change for the working people can only mean the elimination of the opposing capitalist class. The idea that if we wait things will get better is mistaken. Capitalism is a disease. Don’t be mesmerised by leftists running up and down screaming “Revolution”. Don’t be distracted by one set of reformers demanding a fight against these particular cuts but not those other cuts. Don’t believe we can disguise ourselves to infiltrate the Labour Party and take power so that we can then hand it over to the people. Only the people can take power. We the people must do it. Why at this time is there so much talk about workers’ participation from the liberal progressives? Such calls for workers’ participation is for the purpose of seeing to it that workers don’t have real control. The only real workers’ control is socialism.

The Socialist Party deny that reforms can eliminate the injustices of our society. Those injustices stem from the fundamental character of capitalism—so the system as a whole must be changed. It has carried on an unrelenting struggle against reformism in working class politics, attempting to break the workers from reformist illusions. There are no automatic, "guaranteed" routes to class consciousness. The task of socialists is to try to educate people towards an understanding of what is necessary to change capitalist society—but no struggle "necessarily" leads to socialist conclusions.

The ruling class creates the basic material conditions for its own downfall. The capitalists, in its drive for profits, continuously concentrates the means of production and aggravates the contradiction between the social character of production and the private ownership of production. The exploitation of the working class and the oppression of the masses intensifies. This is what is meant when one says that the proletarian revolution is inevitable. But the working class, in order to fulfill its historic mission of leading the battle to overthrow monopoly capital, must become conscious of itself as a class and of the nature of society. The working class must be armed with revolutionary class consciousness, and organisation

All societies, at all times, face the contradiction between the new and the old, between what is growing and what is dying out. Our society is dying out. It pollutes all that is fresh, alive, vital, and growing. The ballot-box was granted to us by our masters for their purpose; let us use it for our own. Let us demonstrate at that ballot-box the strength and intelligence of the revolutionary idea; let us make the hustings a rostrum from which to promulgate our principles. The Socialist Party holds that only the working class can bring about socialism. No other class as a whole has the thoroughgoing interest in the destruction of capitalism, nor the power and potential organisational force that the working class has. It is the socialised conditions of oppression of the working class that bring it into fundamental contradiction with the individual and private conditions of ownership that characterise capitalist society.

 Our vision remains undimmed and our resolve unbending. Our confidence in the party is strengthened by the fact that it has remained true to the banner of revolutionary internationalism and to the interests of the working man and working woman at a time when it counts – during the war. We have not retreated from our principles, we have not vacillated, we have not given up an inch of them or sought to gloss them over in the hope of gaining a deceptive and momentary popularity. And that is how we shall continue to be. Unite with us for a new age, for a society free of war and oppression, of exploitation and inequality, for world socialism. There are no separate roads to socialism. There is only one road and that is the road of revolution. The purpose and aim of a genuinely revolutionary socialist party is to capture power  through a willing majority. 

Transforming Our World

Fellow workers, sisters and brothers, people are under attack. Our communities are under siege. In the cities and in the rural areas, conditions are all the same. Jobs are minimum wage and factories continue to close. Unemployment benefits are a joke and welfare benefits can’t feed our children or pay our rent. Many of us are forced to live in the streets like animals. Our communities are flooded with drugs and alcohol. Our children have no future. The police harass us. The politicians and their political parties don’t represent us. They are tied to the banks, the rich, the powerful and the rest of the capitalist class. A system that cannot feed, clothe and house its people does not deserve to continue to exist. We can and must organise to replace it. 

Workers have won great victories. Workers have suffered painful defeats. Workers have suffered foulest betrayals. What the working class learned from its experiences is of decisive importance. One scarcely need add we are not “mechanical” Marxists – the workers didn’t learn automatically. Only where revolutionary forces drew correct conclusions and explained them to fellow-workers can conscious progress be made in the working class movement. A clear understanding of the nature and scope of the problem and of the prominent position strikes as a manifestation of the class struggle will play are necessary prerequisites to our success. Our goal is the equal sharing of the responsibility is running society and accruing it benefits of society, the establishment of the application of equality.

A contradiction under capitalism is that between the social/collective nature of society’s basic production process and the private nature of appropriation of the product of that process. This is in the form of profit, which represents wealth taken from those who produce through the system of wage labour. The resolution of this contradiction is and must be a revolution to establish socialism, a system characterised by the struggle to end all exploitative relations and establish collective ownership and control of society’s resources and production. This will result from the class struggle on a world-wide level, between the many who take part in social production and social life, and the small few whose power and wealth rests on their control of the means of production, and power to appropriate the fruits of the labour of the many. 

One of our tools for understanding is historical materialism, formulated by Marx and Engels. What we do in the world, is the main thing, it will never develop beyond early mistakes unless we constantly succeed in learning from it – to work hard at drawing necessary and appropriate conclusions from it, to guide future practice. The State is an elaborate political institution, and its main function is to protect and serve the power of the ruling class. In spite of apparent concessions, it will always protect the process of private appropriations of social production. Because of this, socialist revolution requires that the State of the capitalist ruling class must be abolished.

Our Purpose Is Clear: Socialism

Chattel slavery was abolished because wage slavery was more suitable for the growing capitalist economy. The subjugation of men and women has always been inseparably connected to class society, is maintained by class society, and cannot be resolved until classes are abolished. All national strife will be abolished only when inequality and capitalism are abolished.

The reformers are having a hey-day devising the means by which the world can be saved and the security working people is assured. The air is so full of schemes to give the workers a few more crumbs. The social consciousness of many people is being stirred. Men and women are asking themselves some questions like: What am I going to get out of all this misery? Do we have to have one war after the other? Isn’t there some way we can end all this inequality? Such questions are very dangerous for the capitalist system. Capitalism, with its system of production for profit and system of international rivalry for domination of foreign territories and trade, which produces one war after another keeps millions subjugated and exploited, by its wage system. Capitalism does not know how to abolish its many social problems BUT WE SOCIALISTS DO. If this system cannot give peace and plenty to its people, SOCIALISM CAN. A liberal reformer is someone who doesn’t like what capitalism does, but likes capitalism. They try to solve the problems created by the system by supporting the system.

Abolish the private ownership of the land and factories which will transfer the means of production from private ownership to common ownership. Socialism by makes all of – society the joint heirs and owners of the tools of production, will restore to the workers that private property of which capitalism deprives them. The aim of your striving must be the triumph of socialism. Socialism means production for use and not for profit. Socialism means internationalism. It means that one working class is not pitted against the others in wars, It means that one working man is not pitted against the other in the fight for a job. It means that one working class is not cutting the throat of the other by producing at lower wages than the other. The criteria for production under socialism would be – how much is needed? Some people will argue that it can’t work, it’s a utopia. We can only answer that capitalism has demonstrated that IT can’t work. A society organised on the basis of production for use would have more of a chance of working than our present economic system. none of the politicians and economists have been able to devise any kind of plan to solve the basic ills of capitalism. They all seek to do the impossible: make capitalism work. Untold misery, poverty and unemployment are the living facts that prove that capitalism doesn’t work – not for the working class, anyway. Socialism has not “broken down wherever it has been tried,” because it has never been tried.

Everything you use, everything you eat or wear, your car, your house — you didn’t make any of these things. We don’t produce these things as individuals. We produce socially. We have a division of work in the world. People in one part of the world make things which people in another part of the world use. But, even though we produce socially, through co-operation, we don’t own the means of production socially. And this affects all the basic decisions made in this society about what we produce. These decisions are not made on the basis of what people need, but on the basis of what makes a profit. 

There are people going hungry all over the world. And yet, because of the profit system, governments pay some farmers not to farm. Farmers don’t make their decisions by saying: “We need a lot of corn so I’m going to plant a lot of corn.” They never say that. They say: “How much money am I going to make if I plant corn?” Did you know that if decisions were not made on this basis we would have the potential to feed the whole world many times over? The economic potential is there. 

Take the question of housing. If you took just the money that’s spent on wars and armaments we could build beautiful free homes for every family. We could wipe out every slum. The potential exists, not only in the factories and materials for building, but in the potential to build new machines and factories. Yet, they are not going to solve the housing question because it’s not as profitable to build houses as it is war-planes. 

Did you know that because of the way the system is structured a large percentage of the people do not do any productive work at all? You have the unemployed who are not hired because it’s not profitable to hire them. Then you have the people in the army, not to mention the police and private security, and others who consume a great deal but don’t produce anything. Then you have things like the cashiers on the check-out. They don’t do anything really useful or necessary. In addition, you have a mammoth, organised effort to create waste. For instance, if you designed a car that would last 50 years, they wouldn’t manufacture it. Because that would destroy the purpose of making cars, which is to produce profits. 

Say you are a capitalist, and you’re about to build a factory. Do you say: “I’ll build it where it’s nice, where there are trees and fresh air, and where the workers will have nice homes and will be able to go mountain climbing or hunting or swimming?” No, that’s not the way you think. You say: “Well, where’s my market, where are my raw materials coming in, how can I make the most profit?” And this means you might build the factory where you will pump even more pollution into the air, another example of a problem which stems directly from this system.

All the institutions under capitalism are ideological institutions in the sense that all of them maintain and demand support for the system. So it should be no surprise to you that the higher you go in a corporate career, the higher you go in the university structure, the higher in rank you get in the army, the people get more and more conservative. They get more and more consciously pro-capitalist system; they are more and more for whatever crimes the system has to commit. They simply wouldn’t be there if they weren’t.

Socialists have been accused for many years of wanting to overthrow the capitalist class by force and violence. When they accuse us of this, what they are really trying to do is to imply that we want to abolish capitalism with a minority, that we want to force the will of the minority on the majority. The opposite is the truth. We believe we can win a majority of the people to support a change in the system. Many people have a stereotyped picture of what a revolution is like. What they do is they confuse revolution with insurrection. We have a working-class army, for example, that has a great deal of actual and potential power. Because workers run everything ask yourself, why is this power never realised politically? The reason is simple. The majority of people are under illusions and the capitalists can rule only through maintaining illusions. Many believe that the ruling class has unlimited power. If the ruling class announced that they were cancelling all elections, cancelling freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and so on and if there is any resistance they’ll throw us all into detention camps, how long do you think they would stay in power? They couldn’t do it. Their power is already limited by a certain consciousness that exists in the minds of the people. Their power is limited by the fact that people believe in free speech, in free assembly and in democracy. For sure, they will suppress opposition to them insofar as they can get away with it. And they will use brutal means if it suits their needs. But they will try to keep the repression in the bounds without arousing the resistance of the people, without destroying the illusions. Because, if the people begins to wake up, that’s a greater danger. The hope the ruling class has is if it can isolate the socialists completely from the rest of the people. That is why the number-one task of all socialists who really want to change the system is to reach out to the people. Capitalism does it for us. The system creates the situation in which people awaken. People grow dissatisfied, to the point of rebellion. They want to be free. And they realise this is possible. All of a sudden, you have an increase in consciousness, an awareness about the problems of society, created by the capitalists. And this awareness can become much more intensified. Now you can have radical uprisings of all sorts, but that will never result in a change of the system, unless it’s organised, because, people when they first become radicalised, don’t fully understand the general problems. They don’t understand how to change society. Very few individuals come to this consciousness completely on their own. What you have is an overwhelming mass of people who have objectively no interest in this system. They have to be won over, and our whole strategy, everything we do, has got to be directed at winning them. A socialist party, the collective expression of a whole class is required. That’s what Marxism is all about. That’s what revolutionary politics is all about. 

Women and men of the whole world let us clasp hands across the frontiers to bar the road to war, oppression and poverty. Let us end the wars now being waged.

The Socialist Party opposes the capitalist system.

We are living in extremely frightening times. Life is becoming more difficult for most and many of the causes workers have fought for are being pushed back. There is war. It is class war. It is waged by the representatives of one class, the oppressors, against the mass of another class, the oppressed. In this war, the State is always and invariably on the side of the oppressors. The State is the big stick of the owners of wealth, the big stick of the big corporations. Those who try to persuade you that the State is your friend and protector, that the State is impartial and only “regulatory,” are misleading you. Under capitalism you cannot protect both “industry” (meaning the capitalists) and labour (meaning the workers). When you defend “industry” you give it freedom to exploit “labour”. The State serves the interests of big business. The essence of the capitalist State is service in the employ of capitalism for the preservation of capitalism. Reformists propose a little tinkering here and there.

It becomes more and more obvious that mankind stands at a cross-road – to socialism or to barbarism. While the workers are striving to lead humanity up to socialism, the capitalists, fearing to lose their power and privileges are trying to drag the social development down the other road. Unfortunately, with the 'middle class' rapidly sinking into insecurity, others declassed by uber type gig employment and many young people who have no chance of entering the process of production are willing to follow any populist demagogue who promises them to bring about any change. The idea of forgoing democracy consequently seems less repugnant to the present generation. Tactics of lies and slander as well as their general hero-worship – all this assists in creating an even more dissatisfied audience.

Under capitalism the workers are wage slaves, slaves of the bosses. The bosses run the factories in order to maximise profits. This means that they pay workers as little as possible, that they do not hesitate to maintain unsafe working conditions to save a buck, and that poor quality products are purposely produced in order to increase profits. History has shown that these conditions are always present under capitalism, and cannot be eliminated as long as there is bosses rule. A capitalist has to exploit his workers in order to survive as a capitalist.

Without a vision of a better world and the organisation that goes with it, protests of ordinary working people in response to injustice will likely go nowhere or worse. The first step in creating this vision is taking the blinkers off and telling the truth about our current society. Fundamental social change leading us beyond the profit system is essential. The Socialist Party stands for the abolition of landlords and capitalists by the workers. We believe that society has reached a stage where it is possible so to organise production as to end poverty, unemployment, inequality and war. To lift the working class everywhere from wage-slavery to freedom, dignity, and self-control is the purpose of the world socialist movement. Socialism is modern free society, based upon cooperative industry, administered in the equal interest of all. There are no guarantees, of course, that humanity will ever get there. Global catastrophe is a real and growing possibility. But it is important to keep the dream alive and continue to struggle.

There Is A Way Foward

All States represent the rule of one class over another, but for the first time in history. And its purpose is to enforce exploitation, to allow one class to live parasitically off another, but socialism is to end all exploitation and create the community of working people, without class distinction. When all of society has been transformed, with the ulcers of capitalism have been eliminated, and the community of workers has been established, then socialism, completely class-free society, will have been achieved, and humanity will enter a whole new stage of history. Socialism is a tremendous advance over capitalism. Socialism eliminates the anarchy of capitalism and its crises, by common ownership of the means of production and collective planning of the economy controlled by society as a whole. This removes the tremendous barriers to production that capitalist relations have erected. Unemployment will be ended, because socialism will be able to make full use of the labour of everyone in society, while at the same time developing and introducing new techniques and scientific methods to expand output. As new technology can replace workers, workers will not be thrown into the streets, but transferred to other jobs–according to an overall plan–and gradually the work day for all workers will be reduced. The nature of work itself will change completely, because the labour of the workers will no longer go to enrich capital to further enslave the working class, but to improve life today, while providing for the future, according to a conscious plan. The pride that workers have in their work will be unhindered by any sense that they are working themselves, or someone else, out of a job, or that they are being driven to produce for the private benefit of an employer, under the orders of his or her foremen and the constant threat of being fired. Machines will no longer be weapons in the hands of the capitalists to grind down the working class, and workers will no longer be a mere extension of the machine, as they are under capitalism. Instead machines will become weapons in the hands of the working class in its own struggle to transform society. The organisation of work will be the province of the producers themselves. All this will unleash the stored-up knowledge of humanity, based on its direct experience in production, and inspire workers to make new breakthroughs in improving production. Work itself will become a joy and enrichment of the worker’s life, instead of a miserable means to sustain existence, as it is under capitalism. With the ownership of the means of production in its hands, the working class will take up the ending of all inequalities between nationalities as a crucial part of building socialism. Discrimination in work and all areas of society will be wiped out. This it will fully accomplish under socialism, as a key part of strengthening its rule, continuing to revolutionise society. Working people will have a variety of organisations and decision-making to involve the majority of people in the process of running and remaking society. Socialism will make possible the building of well-constructed housing for the masses of people. Under capitalism, it is more profitable to speculate in land, maintain slum housing and put capital into buildings for big business than to build decent housing for the masses. The slums will be ripped down, and in their place new homes and other facilities for the masses of people will be built. Health care under capitalism is a nightmare for the people and big business for the drug companies, hospital corporations and others who make billions from the butchery of the people. Under socialism health care and hospitals will no longer be a means to make profit, but a means for the working class to prevent disease and to preserve the health of the people.

Education in class society reflects and promotes the interests of the ruling class and instills in the youth the values and outlook of this class. Under capitalism this means that education is geared to maintain the division of society into classes, the conditions of capitalist exploitation and the rule of the capitalists over the working class and masses of people. Capitalist education prepares the great majority of youth only for existence as wage-slaves and as a key part of perpetuating the capitalist system of wage-slavery distorts history to make it revolve around the “brilliant ideas” and individual heroism of great “geniuses,” Kings, Emperors, Presidents, bankers, industrialists and other representatives of the exploiting classes throughout history. Children are taught to compete against each other and that competition is what “makes this country great.” Reality is stood on its head, so that it seems that capital, not labour, is the source of all progress and that the workers live by the grace of the capitalists. Education in socialist society will serve the interests of the working class in building socialism, suppressing the forces of capitalism and continuing the revolutionary struggle to transform all of society and achieve communism. It will put reality back on its feet and expose this bourgeois propaganda. It will instill in the youth the understanding that the labouring people throughout history have been the backbone of society and the source of its development. It will promote cooperation in place of competition, and equality between nationalities, between countries and peoples, and between men and women, in place of the bourgeois garbage that one nation should be over another, that men are superior and women inferior, etc. In place of the bourgeois view of history that presents it as a jumble of unrelated events, stemming from the personalities of “great men,” it will teach the youth that history is determined by the struggle between classes and will enable them to determine the class outlook of all ideas. Socialist education will stress the living link between theory and practice, between knowing and doing, and will help develop workers who are capable of combining mental and manual labour. In short, socialist education will be a crucial part of raising new generations that can carry forward the revolutionary role of the working class.

Religion serves capitalism by telling people that they are basically helpless before the forces of nature-and the rulers of society–and they should put their faith not in the ability of the masses of people to change the world, but in a supreme, supernatural being, or beings. And if that isn’t enough, religion can call up the image of fire and brimstone to threaten people.

More, those who control major organised religions make huge fortunes from collecting large sums from their members, investing much of these sums and exploiting labour. While telling the people to wait for “pie in the sky,” these hypocritical leeches live like kings, right here and now, from the sweat and blood, hopes and fears, of the people. At the same time, in every community, hustlers of all kinds–calling themselves “men of god, prophets,” etc.–prey on workers and other poor people, promising them all kinds of miracles to ease their misery–for a nice fee (donation), of course.

Socialist society will eliminate all use of religion to exploit and oppress the people. And the Party of the working class will lead a consistent political and ideological struggle to arm the masses of people with the understanding that they are the true force that changes the world and that they can conquer nature. The outlook of the working class is scientific–it recognises that the causes of things lie in the living struggle of opposing forces, in nature and society. While at any time there are things that are not yet known, there is nothing unknowable, there is nothing that is not bound by the laws of nature and society and nothing in the universe which cannot be harnessed and transformed in the interests of the people, once the basic laws governing it have been discovered and grasped by the masses of people. The working class, once it becomes conscious of all this, has no need for belief in supernatural beings or forces of any kind.

The capitalist class spreads its culture, not only through the educational system, but through its vast mass media–its newspapers, magazines, television, radio and movies, and other forms. Bourgeois culture, which reflects the outlook of the capitalists, is decadent. It glorifies parasites–whether bank president, gangster or pimp–and those who do the dirty work of the bourgeoisie in suppressing the people, like cops. It promotes cynicism, despair, and the lie that the masses of people are at fault for all the problems of society–since these can hardly be covered up. It tries to demoralise people with the idea that they are the helpless pawn of mysterious and sinister forces. In all its forms it aims at deflecting the anger of the people away from the ruling class back onto themselves–hate people of another nationality, or the other sex, hate yourself, hate people in general, hate anything but the ruling class itself.

Socialist society will wipe out the decadence of capitalism in all spheres. Capitalist society, which is based on the robbery of the working class by the bourgeoisie, breeds crime on all levels. The capitalists themselves are the greatest criminals and murderers of all time, and there is no way they can eliminate crime. Socialist society will eliminate crime, along with eliminating the criminal capitalist class. Those who, in capitalist society, are forced into crime for survival, because they cannot find work–at least not at a living wage–will no longer have the need to do so.

If all this seems like a mere dream now, it is only because the apologists of capital have so greatly distorted possibilities. Socialism will mean all this, and much more. But none of this will come as a “gift,” or “automatically”.

In the slave system, it was considered “natural” for one group of people, the slave-owners, to own other people, the slaves. In capitalist society, this idea is regarded as criminal and absurd, because the bourgeoisie has no need for slaves as private property (at least not in its own country). But it has every need for wage-slaves, proletarians. So it presents as “natural” the kind of society where a small group, the capitalists, own the means of production and on that basis force the great majority of society to work to enrich them. The slave-owners and the capitalists have one fundamental thing in common–they are both exploiters, and they both regard it as the correct and perfect order of things for a small group of parasites to live off the majority of labouring people. They differ only in the form in which they exploit and therefore in their view of how society should be organised to ensure this exploitation. When humanity has advanced to communism, society as a whole will consciously reject the idea that any one group should privately own the means of production. Then wage-slavery, based on the ownership of capital as private property, will be seen as just as criminal and absurd as ancient slavery, based on the ownership of other people as private property. The working class, by its own nature as a class, has no interest in promoting private gain at the expense of others and every interest in promoting cooperation. For only in this way can it emancipate itself and all humanity.

The working class can emancipate itself only by emancipating all humanity. The division of the world into nations will be replaced by the world community of people. Nothing can save capitalism in the long run, because it has long since become a barrier to progress and long since prepared the conditions for its own destruction. The advance of the proletariat, the greatest and most powerful class in history, to communism, to the elimination of class society, is inevitable.

The people need a future

We the working class create the wealth of society. But we do so only for the profit of the bosses on terms dictated by them. As workers, we are forced to work long hours in conditions which endanger our physical and mental health. We have no control over what we produce, how it is produced or what it is used for. Every aspect of our lives is dominated by the need for money. At most, what we are paid allows us to consume a part of what the bosses decide it is profitable for us to produce. Even then the goods we buy often fall apart before we have paid for them. The food we eat is adulterated. 

The working class is the dispossessed class. We depend on selling our labour power to the bosses. But since labour power, as a commodity, is bought and sold like any other commodity, the bosses can refuse to buy it when it is no longer required. For the bosses who own and control the means of production, all production has a single aim: profit. Nothing is produced unless it can be sold profitably, however much it may be needed. For the sake of profit mountains of food are destroyed. Resources are denied for basic health care. The houses and cities we live in are allowed to decay. Instead resources are devoted to arms and armies so that the bosses can send us into war against rival profiteers. Resources are used to maintain and arm the police forces which defend the bosses from our anger. Nor do the bosses stint on luxuries for themselves. None of this would happen in a rationally organised society. It is the outcome of a society propelled by the lust for profit. For all these reasons the working class has no interest in the continued existence of this society.

The era of capitalism is coming to an end. The continued existence of capitalism threatens the survival of humanity. The crisis of capitalism is propelling the world towards economic and ecological catastrophe. Nationalisation is a state capitalist measure which offers no benefits whatsoever either to the workers employed there or to the working class as a whole. Nothing could be further from the truth than the idea that state capitalism equals socialism, or a step towards it. Nevertheless, the idea that state capitalism is or could be beneficial to the working class is still a powerful force holding back the class struggle. The organisation of socialist society will be based or the collective 'administration of things', not on the political power of a ruling minority over the majority. The State, which throughout history has been the organisation of ruling class power, will have been abolished.

Socialism is a struggle to replace competition by cooperation, production for profit by production for need. This will make it possible to redevelop the large areas of the world devastated by capitalism, and to institute a system of global planned production. A socialist society such as we envisage is only possible on the basis of material abundance. The potential for this has already been created by the development of capitalist industry and agriculture. Goods will be freely available and free of charge. Money will disappear. However, socialism will not be like a huge supermarket where consumers simply help themselves. Work will be done because we want it to be done and want to do it - not because we have to in order to survive. The focus of interest in our lives will shift away from passively consumption, to include the new form of productive activity. This does not mean that overnight all productive activities will become passionately interesting but a free society will strive to make them so by continually transforming the aims and methods of production.

 There will no longer be a mad scramble to exploit resources without concern for the future, or a rush to buy the latest model or the newest fashion which gives the illusion of inventiveness and innovation. The separation between work and leisure will actually disappear. People will freely associate to creatively use and transform their lives, by creatively using and transforming goods, activities and the environment, in an attempt to satisfy all our developing needs and desires. Community and communication will emerge in this common project: people will no longer be mere objects in the production process. The essence of socialism is the passionate transformation of the world and of ourselves, in the creation of a world human community.

The Socialist Party role in all this is, through our agitation and campaigns, to publicise, support and encourage today’s struggles which help spread of revolutionary ideas and a revolutionary consciousness within the working class and to escalate the class war towards achieving socialism.

Abridged and adapted from here