The Future We Need

Socialism is a political movement that aims to create a classless and stateless society structured upon common ownership of the means of production, free access to articles of consumption, and the end of wage labour and private property in the means of production, distribution and the land.

Committed to building a more just future, The Socialist Party challenges the taken-for-granted “truths” that support capitalism as the only common-sense possibility and that there is no alternative. Does capitalism “work”? For sure, capitalism works well for the few, accumulating wealth and power in their hands but is that what we want, or do we want a system that works for everybody? The capitalist system breeds the incentive for corruption, theft, and greed. In socialism, money would not be required to help one achieve or create, as facilities would be made available to serve everyone's needs. No more poverty - At this moment in time, tens of thousands of children die each day in 'developing' countries due to malnutrition, and preventable diseases. Every person on this planet would have the chance to live and flourish and create and benefit humanity as a whole. No more wage slavery and the need to work for the majority of our lives to pay our living costs, pay our debts, our housing costs, for food and all the things that we need to be fulfilled in our lives. No more property crimes - why would it exist in a world where there was no need for financial gain or the opportunity to profit from crime? No more wars - if all resources are available to everyone, then armed conflict would be as pointless as mugging someone for their possessions.

Schools have for decades been institutions that train and focus children on competing and gaining employment. They are not about what a child may be good at, not about promoting individual ability and creativity. A simple example would be a child who excels at art. They cannot aim to simply leave school and create art. They are encouraged to train for a career in art, so they can make a living. In a socialist society they would be fully supported and allowed to create for the sake of creation, not to earn a living. There will be the chance for all individuals to reach their potential - And this would be supported fully by the system. People would have the unrestricted opportunity to contribute to the overall advancement of Humanity as a whole. There are children alive today, who may have the ability to contribute, but will never have the opportunity because their family is poor and can't afford to fund their further education, or their training in a particular area. Socialism would remove this profoundly wasteful fact of life. Choice and opportunity would open up to everyone more than we can ever know now, people would be more free to live their lives in a more comfortable, stress free world. Imagine the time we would save from waiting in line at the banks, in the stores, at the markets. What about the time we would have to spend time with our children instead of a job, imagine the time we would have to find other ventures in life to enrich our lives and others all at a remarkable level.  The possibilities are far beyond our imagination or comprehension today. Knowledge will be made freely available. All information in society will be transparent. Education will be tailored to meet the children's interests not society's perceived interest. The idea being that given the opportunity to excel in the areas that they have a proclivity for, this type of learning will benefit society more than if learning was standardised and directed.

We are told the world is complex for socialism. Yet many things are quite simple—we live in a world where a billion people go hungry while we dump half of all food produced. Today we have the ability to reflect and draw upon the past and present and to create the best possibilities. Doing away with capitalism doesn’t mean resorting to primitivism, denying the poor their right to development, or abandoning all of our technology. There are limits to the Earth’s resources, but we can organize a productive, equitable, and sustainable social order that includes many of the comforts of modern life and the benefits of technology. In fact, getting rid of capitalism gives us the best chance of having time to organize a sustainable system of consumption before it is too late—staying hooked into capitalism may be the quickest route to social collapse.

Modern society has access to highly advanced technology and can make available food, clothing, housing and medical care for free. In socialism all of the world's resources are held as the common heritage of all people. At present, we already have enough material resources to provide a very high standard of living for all of Earth's inhabitants. Money is only important in a society when goods must be rationed. Socialism is a system in which all goods and services are freely available without the use of money, credits, barter or any other system of debt or servitude. Free access to plenty for all. We believe in a world of people cooperating, collaborating, and committing to holding each other accountable to planning and acting on what is in the best interest of everyone.  There is no possibility for true freedom until we are all free, and this will only come through a much richer and deeper conception of human freedom.

We can stick to this old system where everything for profit, where peoples’ lives are valued in monetary terms, where there is, wars, suffering, hunger and scarcity. Or we could live in abundance with a sustainable ecological system, where everyone could do what really makes him or her happy, not what the commercial consumerist world wants you to think what makes you happy. In capitalism everyone grabs for the largest slice of the pie they can get away with. No need for PROFIT anymore! Need for more and more profit destroying men, society and planet. No more environmental destruction with an end to planned obsolescence – the process of a product becoming obsolete and/or non-functional after a certain period or amount of use in a way that is planned or designed by the manufacturer. Planned obsolescence has potential benefits for a manufacturer because the product fails and the consumer is under pressure to purchase again, whether from the same manufacturer (a replacement part or a newer model), or from a competitor. The purpose of planned obsolescence is to hide the real cost per use from the consumer, and charge a higher price than they would otherwise be willing to pay (or would be unwilling to spend all at once). In socialism, technology would be made to have a vastly longer operational life span and even when required to be upgraded, would be done so without charge, making sure that everyone would have the best that technology can provide at any given time.

In our experience, the most common questions that arise when discussing socialism revolve around feasibility and motivation. Is it really possible? How will anything get done, how do you keep people motivated without money? The simplest answer to both of these is looking at the existing example that almost everyone is familiar with: the family. In most families a sharing of resources without exchange or barter is in place. The family works together to achieve their common goals and family resources are all shared. Family sizes and family structures vary greatly but the basic principles of working together and sharing are fairly universal. Extending this idea outside of the family to the community and society is our objective. People would want to do something and volunteer for a greater cause because it gives them a sense of being part of something bigger than they are

The great unspoken phrase of politics is “class war”. The media tries to present the fiction that society is without class and we are all individuals. Today’s robber barons know that PR matters and have effectively bought-off the popular opinion makers. Stylishly groomed corporate executives and financiers, who are morally no better than thieves, have become celebrities. They are flattered on reality TV shows and praised on business programmes but it is more and more untenable as actual class struggle daily intensifies. The profound fact is that the world is in the midst of class war. Class struggle is being explicitly fought out in Europe, the Americas, Asia, Africa, and not to forget Australasia. Presently it is manifesting itself by the ruling class demanding austerity. It is time to remember the concept of class war so we can fight it determinedly to the finish. How can we effectively resist and fight back? And how can we organise and educate to revive and strengthen our movement

The discussion on how socialism will work is as old as the workers’ movement and many authors have interpreted it in various ways. It is easy, at the beginning of the 21st century, to be pessimistic about the future prospects of a socialism. No one, of course, can give a blueprint of how socialism is going to work. All we can do here is indicate those general features that we believe a socialist society must have in order qualify as truly socialist. Beyond generalities, however, the specifics of how to structure socialist communities must remain open for discussion and experimentation. It is important to emphasise that the principles are not the arbitrary creations of intellectuals but rather, based upon the actual political and economic structures that have arisen spontaneously whenever the working class has attempted to throw off its chains during eras of heightened revolutionary activity, such as the Paris Commune. The important thing is that a practical alternative is shown and that it is not ascribed as an unrealistic aspiration. A socialist economy would for the first time give people, as producers and users, the chance to control every step of production, take initiatives and experiment without being strangled by profit-driven competition. This would make possible an economy based on equality and in harmony with nature.  Why would people produce poor quality goods when they are producing to meet their own (and others) needs? Imagine a world in which all barriers to a decent life for all human beings had been removed; a society in which the resourcefulness of modern technology and industry was put to the task of decreasing labour and increasing leisure.

Capitalism is not simply a ‘free market economy’; it is a market economy with a particular form of class relations. Capitalist economics systematically generates both increasing concentrations of wealth and privilege and expanding deprivation. Capitalism’s profit-driven dynamic towards increasing production and markets—with its bias towards a consumption oriented society and the creation of artificial consumer ‘needs’—has inordinate environmental costs. Profit-maximizing creates incentives for capitalist firms to dump waste into the environment.

Many may think they have all the answers, but the problem is, they never asked the questions that matter. Capitalism is a global system based on wage slavery. Against exploitation we raise the banner of emancipation. The end of class society comes through revolutionary change with the abolition of wage slavery, to a society based on the principles “from each according to their ability; to each according their needs” and “the freedom of each is the condition of the freedom of all.”

Socialism rather than always the red flag, has more often than not been the flag of convenience waved by politicians of all hues. There has been hardly any other word in the economic dictionary, more elusive, more ambiguous and confusing than 'Socialism'. It has been hounded, criticized and extolled. It encompasses all types of political system, dictatorships, democracies, republics and monarchies. Everybody imagines socialism in his own way. It embraces such disparate systems as an Islamic socialism practiced by Libya and Algeria, welfare socialism of Norway or Sweden, the Baathist Socialism of Syria, the Ujamaa socialism of Tanzania’s Nyerere and so on. Roosevelt’s New Deal was called socialist to condemn it, as was Keynes" economics. In fact, Roosevelt and Keynes were about as socialist as King Edward VII who once declared at a banquet: "We are all socialists nowadays”. Socialism refers to a body of writings, ideas, beliefs and doctrines and it refers to real world political movements. It will be worthwhile to acquaint ourselves with the more important definitions of socialism.

Politicians do a disservice to their audience by manipulating the language of to conceal a political record that tells a much different story. Discerning audiences must ask difficult questions and hold those in power to account. When socialists talk about the abolition of private property, we are referring to the socialisation of the means of production—the resources and equipment that create wealth. Working people do not own this type of property—which is why we have to work to survive. The Socialist Party stands for the destruction of the present class society and holds a vision of the future of a system where useful work based on a system of cooperation would be the norm for all and where the struggle for bare subsistence would be supplanted by harmonious production of common wealth without the waste of labour or material. Such an aspiration can only be carried out by the workers themselves. The progress of socialist ideas finds different expression depending on the circumstances

Socialism is the economic organisation of society in which the means of production and distribution are owned by the whole community and democratically run by elected delegates responsible to the community, with all members of the community entitled to benefit from the this socialised production on the basis of equal rights. Socialism refers to that movement which aims to vest in society as a whole, rather than in individuals, the ownership and management of all nature-made and man-made producers goods used in production. In G.D.H. Cole’s view "Socialism means four closely connected things—a human fellowship which denies and expels distinction of class, a social system in which no one is so much richer or poorer than his neighbours as to be unable to mix with them on equal term, the common ownership and use of all the vital instruments of production and an obligation on all citizens to serve one another according to their capacities in promoting the common well-being."

The idea of a moneyless economy is not new. It was part of the vision of Thomas More in his Utopia. The Diggers also sought a world where money was redundant. An important obstacle stopping more people supporting the idea of a society based on production for use, is that they simply can’t see how a society without money or wages could work. It seems too daunting - too much of a leap of faith to make. The more we discuss it and argue why a new society needs to involve the removal of the market and money system, the less fearful it seems. In particular, the closer you look, the more examples we can find of where humans routinely behave inside capitalism in "socialistic" ways. There are plenty of examples today to indicate that free access will not lead to abuses. Let us take just three everyday examples, public libraries, water and pavements.

In public libraries people are free to sit and read books all day. However, few if any actually do so. Neither do people always take the maximum number of books out at a time. No, they use the library as they need to and feel no need to maximise their use of the institution. Some people never use the library, although it is free. In the case of water supplies, it’s clear that people do not leave taps on all day because water is often supplied freely or for a fixed charge. Similarly with pavements, we do not spend our free time walking up and down the street because it doesn’t cost us anything extra. In all such cases we use the resource as and when we need to. Why would we not expect similar results as other resources become freely available?

Production/distribution decisions inside non-market socialist society will involve complex decisions - but not much more so than happens at present. Some say there will always be trade-offs, opportunity costs, to use the technical term. Well yes, there will still have to be some trade-offs, but far fewer than at present. How will those trade-offs be calculated? Some believe we need some sort of money accounting system, presumably because this reduced everything to a simple comparable number. But we know that inside capitalism the apparent precision of a price arrived at by the invisible hand of supply and demand hides massive assumptions (need to make a profit for the owner of the productive capital) and is simply not a good measure of social need. But it doesnt even apply in capitalism anymore that buyers and sellers only look at price - they know that the immediate price on offer doesn’t always give a good indication of long-term risk. Do you buy the cheapest nuclear power station available? Or do you check on the health and safety or environmental protection controls in place. Even the smallest local authority contract now places some weight on "external" issues such as quality of product being tendered, timescale for delivery, on-going maintenance support, stability/security of provider (i.e. will they be around in 5 years’ time to service the equipment sold, or be taken to court in the event of a failure).

The need for internationalism flows from the position of the working class internationally. This in its turn has been developed by capitalism through the organisation of world economy as one single indivisible whole. The interests of the working-class of one country are the same as the interests of the workers of the other countries. Because of the division of labour established by capitalism, the basis is laid for a new international organisation of labour and planned production on a world scale. Thus, the struggle of the working class on all countries forms the basis for the movement towards socialism reflected by the statements of Marx that "the workers have no country" and therefore "Workers of the world unite".

Like no other time in history, we have the opportunity to connect using technology and to work with people all over the world to achieve our shared goals. Coming together with like-minds. Just begin to imagine the possibilities where all people had access to everything they needed to live, to think, and to contribute to the common good. Fear of change is a great tool to limit our imagination about human possibilities. The fear of change is always a problem. Anything that relates to something new or out of the basic norm, is a scary thing. It's because people are afraid of trying a new system or testing something different. If you think that socialism will never happen and do nothing, then nothing will change. The Revolution won't be on the barricades with petrol bombs, but will be fought in the hearts and minds of people around the world. The real revolution is the revolution of ideas. We need a shift in consciousness that must take place before we can ever be in a more free society. If we sit around and do nothing then, of course, we will never see socialism, but if we stand strong together, we can literally make this new world. 

You Must Be The Change.

Scotland's Haves and the Have-Nots

Poverty Alliance identified 167 different organisations providing emergency food to struggling Scots. It claimed there is now a "real danger that emergency food aid provision may become a permanent feature of the welfare landscape in Scotland".

Report author Mary Anne MacLeod stated: "It is crucial to understand that we are not just dealing with a problem simply of food, but of poverty and inequality.”

Meanwhile, Blair’s old college has overtaken Prince Charles’ alma mater to become Scotland’s most expensive school. The fees charged by Fettes College, now outstrip Gordonstoun, in three out of four categories, according to the schools’ websites. Fettes now charges over £23,000 a year for senior day pupils – just ahead of Gordonstoun. Fettes’ sky-high fees, say experts, are partly the result of super-rich parents from overseas picking the Scottish capital its combination of relative safety and cultural richness.

Today’s parents have to find £21,825 a year to send junior pupils to board at Fettes – £918 more than Gordonston. Junior day pupils at the city school will cost parents £13,965 a year – £1,110 more than Gordonstoun. Senior day pupils at Fettes have to pay £23,190 a year to attended the prestigious school – £108 more than Gordonston. The only category where Gordonston remains the most expensive in Scotland is for senior boarders currently priced at £30,885 a year – but only £235 a term more than Fettes.

Loretto in Musselburgh is not far behind with fees of £29,460 a year for senior boarders. Merchiston, in Edinburgh, charges £28,560 for senior borders. Dollar Academy charges £25,524 a year for senior borders and £11,034 for day pupils. The High School, Glasgow, charges up to £10,500 a year for day pupils while in Aberdeen Albyn School charges £11,520 a year for senior day pupils.

The Cease-Fire That Wasn't

More optimist noises about the deal arranged by Germany's Angela Merkel and France's Francois Hollande yesterday. They said the truce starting on Sunday could end Ukraine's conflict with Russian-backed separatists, in which more than 5,300 people have died. It is a strange cease-fire however. 'Ukraine witnesses reported heavy shelling in the east of the former Soviet state. Dozens of tanks, missile systems and armoured vehicles crossed the border from Russia, they said.Two Ukrainian soldiers were killed and Kremlin forces began military exercises in 12 regions on the Russian side of the border.' (Daily Express, 12 February) RD

Profit And Pollution

Details released at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science show that about eight million tonnes of plastic waste find their way into the world's oceans each year. 'The new study is said to be the best effort yet to quantify just how much of this debris is being dumped, blown or simply washed out to sea. Eight million tonnes is like covering an area 34 times the size of New York's Manhattan Island to ankle depth.' (BBC News, 12 February) In the battle between profit and pollution there is a clear winner. RD

The world can function without money

Many different political groups and thinkers have given the word socialism many different and often conflicting definitions. The term is loosely defined. Perhaps the worst one being Hitler's national socialism which no advocate of socialism would associate with. Still, sadly, today, socialism is often associated with state ownership or government regulation. When members of the Socialist Party speak the phrase ‘Abolition of Money’, people look at us as though we are mad. Someone who has no money cannot live. This is the way the world is at present. Even in today’s corrupt society, no-one could say that this is right and proper. The Socialist Party describe socialism in terms of free access to all the social wealth of society. The term ‘resource based economy’ was coined by Jacque Fresco in The Venus Project as the name for what kind of economic system he envisions in the future.

There are some criteria of a socialist society that the Socialist Party apply to its meaning and those include that it uses no money and possesses no market system, that all goods are freely accessible to everyone, and that work is voluntary. Socialism does include the idea of a society controlled by everyone, instead of elites. Such a society would ultimately be lacking a state, political leaders and classes. Even Karl Marx realised that the idea and system of the state is wrong, and opposed it.

Thus we would therefore claim that a "real" socialist system has never been established before. Socialism carries ideals, and a theoretical strategy, but factual plans backed by hard proofs are not laid out in blueprints of the future. Everything would be different. This brings us to socialist principles of common ownership and systems without money. Money will become unimportant through the availability of advanced technologies to provide all the means to obtain a good life. To put it simply, money is a commodity and commodities exist because property exists. I make something (property) and you make something I need, but you don't need what I make, so a universal equivalent has to emerge to facilitate this movement of value from one person to another. "Ah ha!" someone might say "this is overcome by labour vouchers". Wrong. Substituting a piece of time-chit for a dollar isn't going to change the nature of the money-form. It can exist as wheel barrows for all that it matters. This is really where the majority of so-called "socialists" fall down, they don't know what property is and they don't know what capitalism is. Money in a post-capital society would not exist because property would not exist, which is the fundamental constituent of capitalism, even if this is state-owned property. No one is selling their labour-power commodity for a wage (money) to buy more commodities produced by people, institutions, corporations, etc that are separate from them.

Billions of us go to bed hungry every night and despite considerable advances in science and technology. We've been accepting widespread poverty, famine, disease and war as part of life. If the economy doesn't serve our needs, then why do we serve the economy? Why do we continue to give our consent to the rule of the few? Why do we vote for our own continued enslavement? Why do we do these things when we know that there is an alternative? The economic system we choose does have a large influence on how we treat each other and the way we think about life in general. It defines much of who we are.

Imagine a world where all property other than personal possessions is held in common, for the benefit of all. Consequently, there is also no money. If you are hungry, you eat. If you want to work, you work. When you are sick or old or too young, society takes care of you. The vast majority of us would like to live in a global community where neighbours help each other and none get left behind. Imagine if we eliminate the very concept of money from our society. This does not mean going back to bartering. It doesn't mean violence to overcome the wage slave system. It only requires that we realise that that together, the people, which includes everyone, have the power to run our own economy.  Implementation of a cooperative commonwealth would establish the basis for a more egalitarian relationship with the values of sharing and caring among the members of society.

Socialism envisions an attainable democratic society in which workers have direct control of their work and environment. It is based on the production of goods and services that meet the needs and wants of the society as a whole - it is not one that merely enriches an elite. Therefore, creative individuals would be free to do what they do best. The engineers could design their idea of the best car, the chef could create and convince people to eat his or her newest dish, the clothing designer could put his or her newest creation on the runway for consumers to see and choose. In a socialist society, the individual's creativity, desires, and talents are at the heart of a socialist economy. Socialism essentially levels the playing field by clearing the economic and educational hurdles that prevent individuals from fulfilling their dreams and their potential. In short, Socialism seeks to ensure that everyone reaches their full potential. Human society existed for many millennia before the advent of money, and it would eventually be rendered redundant in a socialist economy. It is a myth that socialists seek to do away with all personal property. Socialists have no intention of taking away your house, your car, your material possessions, etc. What socialists do desire, however, is common ownership of the means of production, the factories and work-shops, communication, and transportation.

Why don’t people who want to improve the human condition and the ways of the world stop their petty squabbles and put their efforts into achieving socialism? If they did this, it would be the quickest way for them to achieve their objectives. We can speak up for our planet as one community with intertwined interests that can only be satisfied through mutual respect and cooperation. We can replace capitalism with a system based on social ownership, equal human entitlement and workplace democracy. We can exist in harmony with our environment if we get rid of capitalism and promote respect for nature and understanding the interdependence of all forms of life. We can work together in organizations that exist in local communities, but which also connect with like-minded regional, worldwide groups to accomplish the changes we need. Through our words and actions we can demonstrate that the realistic alternative to capitalism is an expansion of democracy. In order to build the peaceful, ecologically sane world we desire, our tactics are non-violent

Desperate Workers

According to the UN at least 300 migrants are feared to have drowned after attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea from North Africa this week in rough seas. 'UNHCR official Vincent Cochetel said it was a "tragedy on an enormous scale". Survivors brought to the Italian island of Lampedusa said they were forced to risk the bad weather on ill-equipped vessels by human traffickers in Libya.' (BBC News, 11 February) Desperate workers are prepared to take enormous risks just to get a job. RD

An Expensive Education

Thinking of sending the kids to a new school this year? How about this then?  'Le Rosy, the £80,000-a-year Swiss Institute is attempting to attract British students.' (Daily Telegraph,26 January) Counting among its scholars the Shah of Iran, Prince Rainier of Monaco and King Farouk of Egypt. Its catchment area was once the glittering palaces that housed the grandest families on the Continent: the Metternichs, the Borgheses and the Hohenlohes.  But Institut Le Rosey is now spreading its net to humble old Britain. RD

Name the Blame

The debate between socialism and capitalism is a battle of ideas that is intensifying. Capitalism’s huge problems have provoked millions to question and challenge it. Socialists offer an alternatives that inspires. Socialism views human nature as co-operative, positive and altruistic. They believe that humans are born equal and that differences in their success are created by society and nurture, not nature. As such they believe that equality within human society is both normal and should be encouraged as humans are collaborative and that co-operation will create the most progress for everybody than individualistic competition. People who have power and wealth oppress the majority and forcing their ideology onto the majority.  This is achieved because the ruling class own the means of production and the workers who actually produce the finished product don't.  Capitalism is a global economic system which has certain intrinsic features which cannot allow full and true liberation to take place as long as it remains. Full and true liberation can only be achieved after destroying capitalism itself first and during the course of building socialism. Its features exist to guarantee its own survival and growth as a system. These are as follows: selfishness; individualism; greed; competition; market forces; wasteful consumerism; planning not based on sustainability but on short-term and maximum private profits and interests of the ruling class minority; militarism; corruption; racism; oppression and exploitation of one class by another; cyclical financial crises; massive and continuous destruction of the environment.

There are advocates of responsible regulated capitalism (some think of themselves as philanthro-capitalists) who are currently in vogue right now for a very good reason - capitalism has clearly got us into a fix, those to blame are rightly unpopular, and there is the strong sense that something must be done. They try to make the case that the bankers and lack-of-regulation have put us in this mess in what could otherwise be a healthy capitalism and suggest that by regulating and mitigating the effects of the profit-motive, a more equal and just capitalism can be obtained. Responsible or ethical capitalism is a vacuous phrase, a slogan smoke-screen, meant to divert attention from the socialist vision for a better future. Those apologists present to-day’s capitalism that can ironed out a few wrinkles by a bit of government legislation and businessmen incorporating a new ethos. They still maintain that capitalism is the best economic system possible, that the market encourages efficiency through competition, and creates an unequaled range of consumer goods, permits people to get ahead if they work hard, respects the individual, and promotes democracy.  It's not perfect, but it works is their case.

Socialists are not just aware of the existence of inequality and the misery it visits on the millions of people across the planet. We propose an alternative way of running society and a strategy to change the world. As unrepentant socialists, we seek to replace capitalism and we claim its nature produces oppression and exploitation whereas a socialist democracy is cooperative and ecological. Socialism offers the best hope for humanity. Socialists can't get there on their own.  A society that strives for equality and participation will only come about through the coordinated action of many people.  Socialism won't solve your personal problems or bring you eternal bliss. The reason to join a socialist organisation is work toward socialism.  The abolition of class rule and establishment of workers' democracy will not come about unless there are socialists organised for it and to win over others. The urgency grows to end hunger, poverty and disease.  Our planet's decaying eco-systems must be rescued before it reaches a point of no return. Never before in history have science and technology provided such opportunities for the all-round development of every human being. Even under wasteful and destructive capitalism, the productive forces exist that could, if planned and utilised to meet human need instead of maximising capitalist profit, ensure sufficient food, nutrition, health care and education for all.

Crime And Capitalism

TV programmes and the national press are fond of depicting the police as dealing successfully with the problem of crime, alas that is a complete fallacy. The advent of cheap heroin in Chicago has led to an increase in crime undreamt of by Al Capone and his contemporaries. 'In the 1920s, 227 gangsters were said to have been killed in the city in the space of four years. Last year there were 424 murders in Chicago, most of them said to be gang-related.' (Times, 9 February) An increase of almost double in a quarter of the time. Some progress. RD

A Modest Lifestyle

Jeff Greene is a billionaire who took a private jet to this year's World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, along with his wife, children and two nannies, and then told Bloomberg that "America's lifestyle expectations are far too high and need to be adjusted so we have less things and a smaller, better existence." (Yahoo Homes, 23 January) His idea of a "smaller better existence" is difficult for a worker to understand as Green owns a $195-million palace in Beverly Hills with 23 bathrooms and a rotating dance floor, two other Los Angeles mansions, a mansion in Palm Beach, a mansion in the Hamptons, and a 145-foot party yacht.  RD                    

Socialism Changes Everything

Capitalism has failed. Across the entire world increasingly desperate conditions exist for the vast majority—mass unemployment, poverty, indebtedness, ever declining wages—are combined with the most fantastic levels of wealth. CEOs make more in a day than their workers make in an entire year, and hedge fund managers make more in an hour than most Americans make in their entire lives. At the root of all the problems of modern society is capitalism, in which everything is subordinated to the interests of a tiny elite. Under capitalism, this tiny capitalist class dominates society by dividing the working class and derives its vast wealth from the extraction of profit by paying workers less than the value they produce. Every capitalist is committed to raising productivity – increasing the amount of capital that can be squeezed from each worker and confiscated by the employer. As more wealth is extracted from the working class and concentrated in the hands of the one percent, society becomes increasingly unequal. Counter-measures can slow the twin process of capital accumulation and growing inequality, but it can be stopped only by eliminating capitalism. Individual capitalists might see the value of a fairer society, but any who chose to slow the rate of capital accumulation would be replaced by others with no such concern. Capitalism has socialised production and distribution i.e. commodities are produced socially by many people, while the products and the value from their sales are privatised, appropriated by the owners of the means of production. Socialism merely balances out the situation, that is to say, production is still socialised, but the appropriation of the value that is produced, including surplus value, is also socialised – all people have a claim upon the goods. Thus society benefits as a whole from common ownership.

Socialism means the extension of democracy to the foundation of all of society for the general improvement of humanity. Many today wrongly assume that the struggle for democracy in much of the world has been won. States that claim to be democratic are taken at their word, or at least those with universal suffrage and ‘free’ elections of representatives. This is because democracy is conflated with elections, which are equated with democracy (while occasionally paying lip service to referendums.) If people cannot gather in assemblies to act directly, they can at least elect representatives to act on their behalf: this is called “representative democracy”. The reality is quite different. It replaces the rule of the people, by the people, for the people with the rule of the self-proclaimed representatives of the people. Neither the expansion of the electorate through universal suffrage nor electoral reform (of the voting system, campaign finance, nomination rules, ballot access, media access, etc.) changes the underlying oligarchic logic of elections. This does not mean that socialists should oppose it but take cognition of its flaws. Socialists argue that capitalism undermines democracy.

Human beings in a given society produce wealth, in various forms, and this wealth is distributed among the members of society via various institutions, laws and mechanisms. However, to speak about how and to whom wealth is distributed inevitably leads to asking questions as to who produced that wealth in the first place. Speaking about distribution without mentioning production is simply useless. Capitalism is an exploitative mode of production in which the capitalist class extracted "surplus value" from the working class. For the first time in human history, labour power itself was sold as a free commodity on the market. Workers are free to sell their labour power to whatever capitalist chose to employ them. But the asymmetry of power in this alleged "free exchange" is that while the capitalist class owns the means of production, the working class only has their labour power to sell. This asymmetry means that while capitalists pay labour a "living wage," the value of this wage (the value of labour power) is always less than the value of the commodities produced by the workers' labor -- if capital could not make a profit it would not employ labour.  Under capitalism, private ownership of the means of production such as factories, machines and raw materials is what determines the ownership of not only the commodities produced via those means of production, but also the proceeds of the sales of the commodities. In other words, shareholders and proprietors appropriate commodities they did not produce, and pocket the profit from their sales. Workers' needs under capitalism are always subordinate.

Realistically, there’s only one way to achieve workplace democracy across the whole of society – a global working-class revolution that takes collective control of production and eliminates the two-class system of capitalism. Socialism is something far more comprehensive than a simple redistribution of wealth but entails the expropriation, the seizure, of the means of production by the working class. Then we could build a truly cooperative society in which everyone is equally worthy to share life’s work and life’s rewards.

Our Aim is True

We live surrounded by inequality. Some have wealth, health, education, satisfying occupations. Others get poverty, ill-health and drudgery. Social mobility scarcely exists. Wealth is funneled to those on top. It is not so much true that “power corrupts” as it is a fact that easily corruptible persons gravitate toward exercise of power. Is this the type of society we want? What does it mean to fight against inequality? The problem of gross inequality in capitalist society is not fundamentally a problem of inequality within our class, between the unemployed and destitute workers and the so-called ‘middle-class’ in relatively more secure jobs and on higher pay. The fundamental problem of inequality is inequality between the capitalist ruling class and the working class.

This inequality between the employing class and the wage workers is taken for granted as a given and is rarely questioned. The income of the capitalist class comes from the unpaid labour of the workers in the form of profit, or surplus value. Everything created by the workers belongs to the bosses. And everything created by the workers contains unpaid labour time in it. The bosses sell goods and services and get the money for the unpaid labour time of the workers — that is, profit. They keep part of it for themselves and become rich. The other parts they pay their banker his interest or their land-owner his rent, the rest they re-invest so that they can get richer in the next cycle of production and selling.

The income of the workers, on the other hand, comes from the sale of their labour power to his or her employer. The workers receive wages or salaries and the amount is always kept somewhere within the range of what it takes to survive. Some workers are paid somewhat more than that and can have a certain degree of comfort, even luxury. Many workers, more and more these days, receive just about enough to get by on in a life of scrimping and saving while others barely get enough to survive. Wages under capitalism are basically what it costs a worker to subsist and to keep the family going so that the bosses are assured of the next generation of workers to exploit. Workers have to struggle to preserve whatever they can through the ups and downs of capitalist crises and periodic unemployment.

No worker can ever get wealthy on wages, no matter how high-paid he or she may be. But the capitalist class as a whole automatically grows richer, (even if a particular capitalist goes bankrupt.) The employing class continuously reinvest their capital and keep alive the ongoing process of the exploitation of more and more labour. The capitalist’s children and grand-children, as a rule, get richer and richer from generation to generation and become family dynasties.

It is in this context, that socialists ask those who are for genuine equality, the question what exactly are you fighting for. If the ultimate goal is to reform the tax code, or to reduce corporate money in politics, or to regulate the predatory capitalist class and the greedy bankers  then it may reduce the obscene excessive levels of inequality a little but most definitely, these palliatives won’t end inequality itself. Class inequality is built-in to the system of class exploitation. The profit system spreads misery and it is time to expose capitalism.

Under capitalism, products and services are only produced and distributed if they can make a profit for the capitalists – those at the top of the system who own the means of producing and selling goods and services, like the factories and the shopping malls. Even when the capitalist system is “working”, when it’s “fine”, it creates massive inequalities between rich and poor. All profit generated by the capitalists always has to be reinvested (as “capital”) to make more profit. Capital never sits still – it’s always moving. Products are made in factories, then sold on the market (exchanged for money), then some of that money pays the workers their wages, while the capitalists pocket the rest as profit. And then the “circuit of capital” begins again. Workers are always short-changed, they never realise the full value of their labour power that they put in because the capitalist always takes out the profit. All the capitalists bring to the table is their legal ownership of the factories, companies and private property in general. Thanks to this or that piece of paper – a share ownership certificate or credit note in their possession – the capitalists are able to make “legal” claims on the profits generated by working people’s labour. The rule of capital is the rule of a crazy market, which creates massive wealth at one pole only to create misery at another.

There is an alternative. If only the system wasn’t run for profit, if only it was democratically controlled by working people, then we could run it on the basis of the need of all – not the profit of a few. That’s socialism – and it is really worth fighting for. 

Tax Dodgers

If a worker tries to dodge tax or fiddles his expenses it is a terrible crime, but the old adage "never steal anything small " seems to apply when the owning class rip-off millions in tax dodges.  According to a huge cache of leaked secret bank account files HSBC's Swiss banking arm helped wealthy customers dodge taxes and conceal millions of dollars of assets, doling out bundles of untraceable cash and advising clients on how to circumvent domestic tax authorities,. 'The files "obtained through an international collaboration of news outlets, including the Guardian, the French daily Le Monde, BBC Panorama - and the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists - reveal that HSBC's Swiss private bank routinely allowed clients to withdraw bricks of cash, often in foreign currencies of little use in Switzerland.' (Guardian, 8 February) RD

China And USA Conflict

Newspaper reports of the proposed visit of the President of China Xi Jinping to the USA portray it as a friendly journey, but in fact beneath the surface it is anything but friendly. 'International relations experts expect the international community to watch how the two powers work through thorny issues in the Asia-Pacific region and reduce, if not eliminate mutual distrust. (CHINADAILY.Com.CN, 9 February) It is expected that hot-spot issues such as disputes about cybersecurity and shipping and trade in the Western Pacific region will be discussed. Whenever capitalists rivals have "friendly meetings" - beware. RD

A Deadly System

The Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has revealed plans to  reduce the number of "avoidable deaths" in English hospital. 'Mr Hunt said an annual review of 2,000 cases of patients who later died would allow hospitals to be ranked according to avoidable mortality rates. Mr Hunt said there were about 1,000 avoidable deaths in the NHS per month.' (BBC News, 8 February) 1,000 deaths per month in order to save expenditure on medical care. That is how capitalism operates. RD

Beyond a dream

Imagine ALL humans living in peace and in harmony with nature in a world of plenty.

As long as capitalism has existed there has been a movement in opposition to it known generally as socialism. Socialism is based on the maxim “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs” – in other words, a society in which people cooperate voluntarily (without coercion in the form of wage or monetary systems) to produce what is necessary to live and enjoy life, and in turn all would be free to take what they need from what is available. Production would be carried out to provide for human needs, not to make a profit, as is done under capitalism. The first task at hand for us is the education of all working people, the raising of political consciousness; we must all become teachers and teach our brothers and sisters until we develop a class conscious critical mass, i.e., a majority. To accomplish this goal we must utilize all forms of media and spread our ideas – that is the essential first step. Also agreed upon is that systems of organization must be in place before the revolution – industrial unions and worker’s councils, community and solidarity networks.

Socialism is money-less economy, an economic system for the world. Socialist economic system would consist of an organization of production to directly satisfy economic demands and human needs, so that goods and services would be produced directly for use instead of for private profit driven by the accumulation of capital. Accounting would be based on physical quantities, a common physical magnitude,( or some others suggest a direct measure of labour-time) in place of financial calculation. In this system there will no kind of money. All products and services will be available for free. That means you will work free to give your services and you will get everything free, whatever you want. One of the goals of socialists is an economy in which all goods are available to all regardless of family, wealth or occupation. The goal of such an economy is an entirely money-less society in which goods are free for all. Socialists wish to replace the State with a society self-managed by the people, and replace capitalism. Socialism is a money-less system in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the workers and the people of the community, rather than by capitalists. The creation of a socialist society would mean that production would be carried out for human need, instead of for capitalist profit; and that every person would have access to that which is necessary for a happy life. In today’s world production is carried out to make money, not to provide for all the people with needs — this is why millions of people starve when there is plenty of food. The end of capitalism would mean the end of poverty, hunger and of economic strife between nations – the root cause of war.

In socialism all people will be cared for and provided with what is necessary to live a good life; all will be free to pursue happiness and their life’s fulfillment in any way in which they choose. A socialist society would have the immediate goal of doing away with all forms of hierarchy: and classes. Socialist society would eliminate nationalist concepts like borders and nation-states, instead being made up of inter-connected communities. Socialists not only advocate democratic self-management of society, rather than state control, but also place a emphasis on the freedom of the individual. As a general rule socialists feel that one should be free to do as they wish as long as they are not harming anyone else. Additionally, association with any community would be completely voluntary and one would be free to dissociate oneself if they chose to do so. As Peter Kropotkin wrote: “Anarchist communism maintains that most valuable of all conquests, individual liberty – it does not ask the individual who has rejected god the universal tyrant, god the king, and god the parliament, to give himself a god more terrible than any of the preceding – god the community – or to abdicate upon its altar this independence…No society is free so long as the individual is not so.” Socialists, however, believe that some sort of administrative body is necessary to direct production and distribution so as to enable the workers to achieve the full material benefits and leisure that modern scientific advances allow us.

In a socialist society work would not be compulsory and no one would be required to work away much of their day as they are forced to do under capitalism. Workers are required to toil for 8 or more hours a day under capitalism because capitalists need them to do so in order to generate surplus value, i.e., to make a profit for the capitalists. This also entails employing the fewest number of workers possible to maximize profits for the capitalist owners. In capitalism many workers produce nothing of value or provide no service of real value, instead they are managing buying and selling and other relations that are only necessary under capitalism. That means under socialism the workforce would enlarge drastically as this unproductive work is eliminated. Socialism could handle unpleasant or dangerous work in a number of ways: it could be incentivized in order to compensate workers; it could be shared between many individuals, so that degrading work is minimized; it could be automated – done by machines; or it could be done away with completely. Automation and the inclusion of more workers in the workplace would greatly shorten the workday. Capitalism, and not socialism, encourages laziness, by forcing us to perform work that is often only "necessary" to capitalist interests. Work under capitalism is very often irrelevant to our personal interests and talents, and is done merely because we have to do so to survive. We have many socially useless jobs that serve no other useful function to society at large or purpose. Considering the nature of work under capitalism, is it any wonder at all that so many people choose to avoid work under such conditions, and that people often hate their jobs even if they are lucky enough to find a job.

In socialism, however, rewarding work would be available and people would work in jobs that they possess a talent for. The unpleasant jobs would be shared by all. For example, there would be no professional garbage workers forced to do the drudgery all of the time. Everyone would have to occasionally get their "hands dirty", though much of such work could be completely mechanized. Furthermore, the purpose of work would not be personal enrichment, but the betterment of the society we live in, and to produce and distribute all of the things that we need and want. Everyone would have to work, no one would be allowed to "earn" simply by "owning" as in capitalism, but the amount of work we each had to contribute would be a fraction of what it is today, since everyone would be employed all of the time. As a result, work and leisure under socialism would be indistinguishable, unlike under capitalism, where we very often hate our jobs and look forward only to our time off.

Many will argue that socialism won't succeed because of "human nature?" because human beings are naturally selfish and amoral. This is perhaps the most common attack made against the viability of socialism. This is also one of capitalism's most effective social myths in making people believe that socialism is simply “pie in the sky”.

Actually, psychology, sociology and anthropology believe that human “nature” isn't inherantly bad. People are naturally pro-social, not anti-social. Our violent, aberrant and anti-social behavior stems from our living in a socio-economic system that encourages malevolent selfishness, competition, and makes the majority of us live in constant want and anxiety.  Human behavior is known to be adaptable, and the environment we live in greatly influences our thoughts and actions. Human beings do not possess natural "instincts" in the same sense as other animals do. Rather, we possess the ability to reason, to adapt, or consciously modify our behavior according to need or according to what our immediate environment demands of us. When the social framework for greed, violence and competitiveness is removed, our correspondingly aberrant behavior will likewise vanish. It should be pointed out that human beings lived in peaceful cooperation for hundreds of thousands of years in humanity's first economic system, often called primitive communism.

Now thanks to modern technology of production, we will have an opportunity for relative abundance. With modern technology now able to produce an abundance for everyone, and not just a fortunate few, thus making it possible for everybody to contribute to the advancement of society, the ruling class has now become obsolete, and has now become a completely idle class that does nothing whatsoever to benefit society but simply lines its own pockets with the vast majority of the wealth produced by the working (i.e., slave) class. Hence, it's these specific economic conditions, and not some nebulous notion of human nature, that created class-divided societies. When socialism is brought about, human nature (i.e., behaviour) will adapt itself to these changes, and anti-social attitudes such as greed, violence and criminal inclinations will be all but excised from the public mindset.

Genuine socialism has NEVER been tried in any country. In fact, socialism is a system that will be worldwide, and isn't intended to function in just one country. Furthermore, socialists firmly believe that socialism will be brought about by working class organization, and by no other means. It will never be brought about by politicians, whose purpose is to control the working class on behalf of their capitalist masters, not to liberate the working class from oppression, or to meet the needs of the working class. Anyone who states that genuine socialism has been achieved in any country is either seriously misinformed or an outright liar, usually the former.

Socialism can only be established through a world-wide revolution led by a majority of the working class. Socialists categorically reject the position known as reformism, that is, the position that capitalism can be reformed into a humane system or that socialism can be established through gradual reforms. We view reforms as offering only temporary and partial solutions to capitalism’s endemic problems. While certain reforms which benefit the working class may be a worthy short-term goal, they are never a solution. Therefore our ultimate goal will always be the establishment of libertarian socialism, as soon as possible. We also reject Leninism or vanguardism – the view that a professional revolutionary elite must establish a self-serving hierarchy and lead the revolution. Only the organized working class fighting together in solidarity, without leaders or rulers, can win freedom for all people.

Is it really possible to consider the democratic control of something as complex as society? The answer to this question of course is 'Yes it is' - by the democratic principle of delegated authority which a self-managed society would use without having to go to meetings all the time just to keep things going. 

A Fortune In Stamps

Capitalism is a crazy system that can condemn working men and women and their families to starvation for the want of a few pounds while this madness occurs. 'A few stamps which lay together in a cigar box in a dusty attic for a century are set to fetch £250,000 when next auctioned.' (Sunday Express, 8 February) Scraps of paper worth more than human existence. Crazy! RD

London Homeless

London may have some of the most expensive housing imaginable but that doesn't stop scores of people sheltering in doorways every night.'But as temperatures dropped below zero over the past week, conditions on the street became  life-threating for the UK's homeless population, and emergency measures, known as homeless people sheltering Severe Weather Emergency Potocol (SWEP), were triggered across London. This is to ensure that no one dies on the street due to the severe weather.' (Independent, 8 February) Many of the homeless are shivering outside beautiful houses that lie empty. Madness! RD

We can have what we need

The Socialist Party holds no hope that those who endeavour to try and manage capitalism will ever get in touch with their supposed sincere better selves to build a world free of exploitation and injustice. Capitalism cannot be reformed or changed into something beneficial. It has to be destroyed to permit human progress. In many ways, the Socialist Party is the messenger who bring the bad news that nobody wants to hear. We try not to deal in fantasy but in facts. People don’t read anymore, don’t learn anymore. History and the knowledge of our past is disappearing. People talk about living for the moment as if it is a virtue. History is something boring that you had to endure in school and then you go on to college you drop to study business management. The Socialist Party purpose is straightforward, and we do not hide it. We want to re-establish the genuine meaning of socialism. It is politics which determines how words are used and abused. Over the last hundred years or so, the word, socialism,  has been drained of all utopian content and no longer serves, as it once did, a catalyst and inspiration. The struggle for justice, for true freedom, and above all, for the survival of humanity, is becoming increasingly urgent. Language and terminology has been totally perverted or at least thoroughly confused. Authoritarian governments are called ‘democracies’ while terms like ‘socialism’ are constantly smeared.

If socialism means the social ownership of the means of production and the fruits of production, so too does communism. The terms 'socialism’ and 'communism' are used interchangeably on this blog. For the market to exist, some sectional interest (an individual, a joint-stock company, a nationalised concern, a workers' cooperative and so on) has to be in control of part of the social product, which it then disposes of by entering into exchange relations with others. Exchange cannot take place when society, and none other, controls the means of production and the social product. Far from socialism being compatible with exchange and the market, the generalised production of goods for exchange on the market is the hallmark of an entirely different type of society - capitalism. The word 'socialism' has taken on the spurious meaning of state enterprises employing wage-earners in order to produce goods for sale on the market. The mere absence of the market is not the sole defining feature of socialism. On the contrary, socialism is not merely a marketless society; it is also a stateless society, a classless society, a moneyless society and a wageless society. Socialism would necessarily be on a world scale. In the society envisaged by non-market socialists, the people of the world would own the global means of production in common and would operate them communally for the benefit of humankind as a whole. Socialism in one country, or even one part of the world, is impossible. Since capitalism today is a global society which encompasses all parts of the world, the socialist alternative to capitalism must be equally global in its scope. Socialism is a global solution to the global problems which have accompanied the rise of world capitalism.

The aim of socialist planning by what Marx calls “the society of associated producers”, is not just to socialize the process of exchange and distribution of goods but to develop the productive forces to the degree that the necessary labor-time for all workers can be reduced to a minimum. This leaves maximum time for and all those good things in life which is the birthright of humanity. There is no known process of the market that can achieve this aim, for the logic of the market is blind to the process of production, and concerns itself exclusively with private accumulation and consumption. As long as we are subject to the coercive pressure of competition and accumulation, each other’s eternal counterparts, we cannot fully realize our talents and potential as individuals. Socialists do not seek to socialise capital, but not abolish it. We do not wish socialised exploitation, but its abolition.

The socialist vision is one of people working together, cooperatively, to build methods of production, service provision, and create well-being while integrating ecological care, justice, and long-term planning to the best of diverse communities’ abilities. The key for the socialist  movement is to mobilise now. If people join together and take action, we will win. This is a battle between people power and capitalist power. It is essential for every issue we care about that we do win. It is a class war the people have to win, and that’s the plain truth of the matter. 

A Strange Sort Of Communism

According to the Hurun Global Rich List 2015 the world now has a record 2,089 billionaires - and for the first time, India has more of them than Britain or Russia. 'The  list charts every dollar billionaire currently living in the world. It shows an additional 222 billionaires were created last year, almost a third of whom were in China. The US still holds the crown for most mega-wealthy residents, at 537. But  China is not far behind with 430, having acquired 72 new billionaires in   2014.' (Daily Telegraph, 5 February) Somewhat comically the Chinese government still claims to be communist. RD

Socialism Will Be A Far Better World

At one time, economists and politicians were intoxicated by illusions of an ever expanding capitalism, which guaranteed full employment and a continuous rises in real wages yet still permitted growing profits and increasing dividends. The world possessed the knowledge and the technical means existed to conquer hunger and disease and to satisfy the basic social and cultural needs of our whole planet. Yet science has been subordinated to the narrow imperatives of short-term profit expectation. Humanity does not need less science or less technology. It needs more science that is in harmony with an awareness of long-term social interests, technology that is subject to conscious decision-making based on the knowledge of men and women, the collective understanding and control of the associated producers. But now, social inequalities have erupted and ecological catastrophes threatens to engulf us all. The convulsions of capitalism grow ever more chaotic. There is no viable cure and ever more reformers are resigned to failure. We are bombarded with the idea that there is no alternative, that capitalism is the natural order of things. We are told that as much as capitalism has problems, any attempts to get rid of it will make things far worse.

There are people hankering for an alternative to this system. Who want to do something meaningful for humanity with their lives. Humanity can move beyond exploitation and social division. It can move to a classless society and a world of freely associating human beings—socialism. The apologists for the status quo tell us anything that fundamentally challenges capitalism is a pipe dream and an unworkable utopia. We are told to try and make a revolution and building an economy and society that promote and serve the common good violates human nature, economic logic, and the very flow of history, that capitalism is the end point of social evolution. Capitalism is not the end of society’s development. It is actually the chief impediment to realizing the potential for a different world. Lies and slanders about socialism are repeated endlessly and become accepted as self-evident truths. We live in a world in which hundreds of thousands die each and every day of war, hunger and disease. We live on a planet whose eco-systems are threatened by the blind workings of an economic system. The question socialists pose is this one: Do we have to live this way? Socialists answer we can really radically change things for the greater good of all. If you want to understand and decide whether socialism is an idea whose time has come, first you need to know what it is: its aims and its foundations. Socialism is not a big welfare state that looks after people. It is not the old capitalist economy simply taken over by a state. Socialism is about the great majority of society, consciously transforming the economic structures, social relations, and ideas that perpetuate social and class division. It is about unleashing the creativity and initiative of those who had been on the bottom of society.

Picture a world where people consciously learn about and transform the world, where people are no longer imprisoned by the chains of tradition and ignorance, where people not only cooperatively work to produce the necessities of life, but engage in art, culture and science, where a scientific outlook inspire, where there is a diversity of opinion and far-ranging discussion over the direction and development of society but no longer stamped by social antagonism, where people interact with each other based on mutual respect, concern, and love for humanity. A world that cares about and takes care of the environment. That is socialism, a worldwide society in which all class distinctions have disappeared; all exploitation abolished; all oppressive social institutions and relations of social inequality, like racism or sexism has vanished. Socialism is a world of abundance, where people together hold all of society's resources in common. It is yet to be achieved but it is possible.

Socialism is not some sort of wishful dream or utopia but a feasible and practical choice for people to make. The productive forces of society—not just machinery, equipment, and technology but also people and their knowledge—have developed to a level that can allow humanity to overcome scarcity, to provide for people's basic material needs, and beyond that to have a large surplus left over to devote to the all-around and future development of society. These productive forces of society are highly socialized. They require millions working together to produce the things—whether we are talking about clothing or computers—that are used by people throughout society. And these productive forces are highly interconnected on a global level: raw materials and machine tools produced in one part of the world enter into the production process in other parts of the world. But these socialized productive forces are privately controlled. A capitalist class of owners appropriates the results of production as private, capitalist property. This is the fundamental problem in the world. And this is what socialism solves. Socialism brings about a radically different way of organizing production and society as a whole. The socialist revolution establishes a new economy based on social ownership of the means of production and social planning; on people cooperating to solve problems and to meet social need; and with a whole new set of economic and social priorities. A socialist revolution creates a new kind of economy. The means of production are no longer the private property of a minority of society. They are placed under society's collective control. Social production is no longer carried out without planning or social purpose but is now shaped according to consciously adopted aims and coordinated as a whole, to meet the fundamental needs and interests of the people. With socialism, people are unleashed to run and transform society. The people on the bottom of capitalist society have been locked out of the realm of producing ideas. Capitalism is a  society where a few engage in the realm of thinking, while the great majority of humanity is exploited and prevented from pursuing intellectual activity. Socialist society transforms this situation. It will enable people to take up all kinds of questions and participate in society in an all-around way.

We now have an added urgency that previous generations of socialists were never faced with – the likelihood of planetary disruption and upheaval from global warming. We can change that and another breathtakingly different world is possible but the socialist movement has to accomplish more and go further than ever before. We have to do a lot better than what we have been doing. 

Ukraine Crisis

As the conflict increases US Secretary of State John Kerry, who was is in Kiev, said the US wanted a diplomatic solution, but would not close its eyes to Russian aggression. 'Moscow is accused of arming pro-Russian rebels - a claim it denies. Russia also rejects claims by Ukraine and the West that its regular troops are fighting alongside the rebels against Ukrainian troops in the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Clashes - which have intensified in recent weeks after a rebel offensive - have left nearly 5,400 people dead since April, the UN says.' (BBC News, 6 February) Accusations and counter-accusations, but we still have 5,400 dead. RD

This Is A Democracy?

The USA like to boast about they have a wonderful democracy but in practice it is very rich people looking after the very rich people. 'The median net worth of a member of Congress was $1,029,505 in 2013 "a 2.5 percent increase from 2012" compared with an average American household's median net worth of $56,355. Once again, the majority of members of Congress are millionaires - 271 of the 533 members currently in office, or 50.8 percent.' (OpenSecrets.org, 12 January)   RD

Make this world ours

The definition of socialism is fairly wide and open for interpretation. Part of the problem is a distorted conception of socialism, which remains the popular view of what we believe. The most common definition of socialism is a form of government that owns, regulates, and administrates the production, distribution and exchange of goods and services. Another common definition of socialism is a form of government that attempts to reduce social, economic, medical, and political inequalities among its people. Neither are what the Socialist Party means by socialism. What then do we mean by socialism? Socialism means a global system of social organisation based on common ownership, democratic control by all, production for use, and free access. With the natural and technical resources of the world held in common and controlled democratically, the sole object of production would be to meet human needs. This would entail an end to buying, selling and the use of money.

Socialists believe that humanity is basically good but is shaped by the society it lives in. A socialist society is run by the people for their own benefit so it will in our interests to make sure it works. We want to be all that we can be and we want this not only for ourselves but also for our families and friends and neighbours. We want to be able to develop all of our potential. Socialism is something we ought to want to have.  And if we ought to want to have it, then we ought to try to find some way of making it work for us once we get it. We can imagine a world in which hunger and poverty cease to exist.

Defining socialism also requires defining what it was not. It does not mean the tyrannical rule of a bureaucratic class which once existed in in the Soviet Union (or China or Cuba). Nor does it equate with nationalization or a centralized command economy. Socialist are unequivocal. It is the people of the world who should exercise control by means of a more advanced democracy in all aspects of life: political, social, and economic. Political democracy, for socialists, is the necessary framework and precondition for other rights and liberties. All the people of the world should be involved in the process of transforming our societies and promoting new hope for humankind. Real socialism is, by definition, democratic. It is economic as well as political democracy.

Under capitalism, working people are forced to work, we literally have no choice but to, otherwise we’d go without the means to survive. We are compelled by the logic of capitalism to sell our labour and, as such, capitalists command, not the people who produce the wealth in society. Huge amounts of products are created under capitalism but it is in the hands of a tiny minority, which is why are in a state of poverty. We have the side of capitalists and the side of workers. For the capitalists, all that matters for them is the growth of their capital. Capitalism requires people who must sell their ability to work (labour power) in order to get the money to buy the things they need. The class division and profit motive of capitalism is at the root of most of the world's problems today. This includes everything from starvation and war, to alienation and crime. Every aspect of our lives is subordinated to the worst excesses of the drive to make profit. In capitalist society, our real needs only ever come a poor second to money.

Capitalism will not change its inhuman drive for profits at the expense of our existence as a species. The rights of the capitalists to make a profit are in direct conflict with our basic rights. In this sense, the capitalist system has become a threat to humanity. Since environmental destruction is a global concern, it requires all of humanity to act collectively, in our overall interests for our survival as a species, to correct the problem and to remove the obstacle of capitalism. It requires a society where humanity has social, economic, and political control over the entire environment. Such a society, a socialist society, is needed to ensure that all decisions affecting the environment are under the democratic control of humankind so that the production of goods will be done for the needs and survival of humanity instead of the production and the destruction of humanity and other species for profit. Only socialism can save mankind from barbarism. With common ownership of the means of production, and common control and protection of all property and wealth, science and society will be in harmony with the ecosystem and humanity’s future. It is true that some people are gravitate toward a radical critique of society during times of heightened insecurity and inequality, but economic crisis alone, however, is not the sole cause of revolutionary change.  The idea of economic breakdown followed by "the revolution" should be retired. It should be replaced by an understanding of a more protracted and complicated process of class consciousness.

Socialism is, as correctly said, must be the product of an engaged, united, and politically aware majority and it doesn't follow automatically that such a majority will simply emerge out of everyday struggles. Nor can it be brought about by the will of a determined and radical enlightened minority. There is no way to win social democracy without a broad labour movement with clear-cut aspirations of what it wishes to achieve for itself. “Revolutionary” formulas, simplistic-sounding slogans are of little help. Practical engagement in everyday struggles is an absolute necessary. But at the same time, that is not enough, and never will be. Socialism distinguish itself at the level of ideas as well as practice. It has to fight an ideological battle too. People do not live by bread alone; they also need ideas, understanding and inspiration – socialist theory.

The Socialist Party does not offer brilliant insights to become guides to action. That responsibility falls upon the working class as a whole to determine. For the sake of humanity, the future is socialism.

       …Together,

       We can take everything:

       Factories, arsenals, houses, ships,

       Railroads, forests, fields, orchards…

       And turn 'em over to the people who work.

       Rule 'em and run 'em for us people who work.

           "Good Morning, Revolution"

               by Langston Hughes

Both the Streets and the Seats

The future demands a new rise in class consciousness. We can’t just wait for capitalism to destroy the world and then build socialism anew on the ruins. Instead we are going to destroy the basis upon which capitalism is built, a system that viciously sucks of the economic power from everybody in society except the rich.  It is not that nobody is listening. Some people are listening.  But most definitely political leaders are not listening and it is they who make the decisions that influence all our lives. They know what's going on, they know why it's happening, they know how serious things are going to get and still after so many years, yet they are still doing practically nothing to stop it. The reasons are much as they have always been. Eighty or so capitalists own half the world’s wealth but more importantly they also own all of the elected officials. People repeatedly say they want change but always the politicians offer more of the same. It is not some sort of complicated and perplexing question why our political representatives do not act in our interests and for the general well-being of all…it is not in the puppet-masters’ interests to act for the benefit of the majority.

Socialists believe people are capable of amazing things and this political disconnection that many feel today will be reversed. We simply hope it happens in our lifetime. Socialists don’t look forward to our children and grandchildren complaining it was our generation’s inaction that were culpable for the increased environmental destruction and the accompanying suffering and misery of billions. Socialists want to say we were the generation that fought back and won and were the generation that learned how to live in harmony with one another and our planet. We are always hopeful there will be enough committed people that we can change the path of humanity.

If you could change anything, what would you change? What you wouldn’t want to do, we are sure, is to keep everything the same as it is. What the Socialist Party keeps saying is that we shouldn’t spend the rest of our days trying to dampen down and dousing all the social problems that have ignited around the world one by one. No piecemeal solution will succeed. Instead, we need to rethink everything as workers who create everything and have real power (even if we don’t hold any right now). Social democracy takes “We the People” seriously, understanding that democracy is something that can always be improved, not somewhere we’ve already arrived. Calling what we have a democracy is not strictly accurate.  Many do not need to be told that for they possess their own feelings of disillusionment and alienation. We feel it; we know it. We witness the decline in personal engagement in our work life and community structures, all the things we built ourselves. We are at an all-time low in terms of community involvement.

When faced with the social problems of inequality rising rates of preventable diseases, widening income gap, stagnating economy, global climate change and its  threat to ecological systems which demand a response, a plan and action, instead of traveling further down the more participatory and democratic road, we are retreating, withdrawing into our atomized selves. All of this points to the need to revolutionize how we make decisions and how we can regain the trust of our co-workers and neighbours. Real democracy might sound impractical but experiences from people all over the world shows that far more is possible than we might imagine.

 Using democracy, citizens administer their communities both locally and further afield, discuss potential solutions for various issues and manage resources. In democracy, ideas are provided via listening and reflecting in conversations with others. It is not based on an expectation that all citizens will reach agreement on all important issues; rather it creates opportunities for people to learn, expand and sharpen their preferences, while building knowledge of and empathy toward their fellows. It is learning to sometimes figure out "what you can tolerate" in order to avoid endless disputes over trying to get everything that everyone "wants." Social democracy is an alternative that allows us to decide and act on the most complex issues of the day, calling upon people power. We must all take an active role in our democracy. We must do democracy. That goes far beyond simply casting your vote. We must all actively champion the common good. Democracy in socialism will seek to organise the system so that communities can participate in the decision-making, can see the ecological risks and benefits to choices and can respond collectively and accordingly. The future is all ours if we want it to be.

Detroit Decline

I mentioned passing by Detroit last month. According to the Toronto Star ( December 13), there are opportunities for young entrepreneurs there as real estate is dirt cheap and that's an upside of the city (?). From a population of 1.5 million in 1970, there remains just 684,799 while the job market has shrunk fifty per cent. 70,000 properties foreclosed between 2009 and 2013 and there are currently 78,000 abandoned structures The 316 homicides in 2013 made Detroit the highest murder rate in the country. Almost 40% live in poverty. The city filed for bankruptcy in 2013 being $18 billion in debt. Even by capitalist standards, the decline of a once great and rich city is astonishing. John Ayers.

Anti-Semitism Increase

Capitalism is a system full of conflicts and hatreds as shown by Anti-Semitic incidents reaching a record level in the UK last year, according to the Community Security Trust. A report by the trust, which provides security for Britain's Jewish community and monitors anti-Semitism, said the number of incidents had more than doubled to 1,168 in 2014. 'Anti-Semitic reactions to the conflict in Israel and Gaza" were the biggest factor behind the rise, the trust said. It recorded 314 incidents in July - the highest ever recorded in a single month. .....The report said the increase was most marked in London - where the number of incidents rose by 137% to 583 - and in Greater Manchester, where the number rose by 79% to 309. It said there were 81 violent anti-Semitic assaults across the UK in 2014.' (BBC News, 5 February) RD

Political Influence

A recent enquiry has been thrown on the Conservative Party's close links with the hedge fund industry, as research showed that around half of the wealthiest fund managers in Britain have given money to the Tory party. 'The research into hedge fund managers' political donations, which was compiled by the Labour Party based on public disclosures, found that of the 59 wealthiest asset managers included on the most recent Sunday Times Rich List rankings 27 had made a combined £19m in donations to the Conservatives, with £10m flowing into Tory coffers since the 2010 general election alone.' (Independent, 4 February) So much for the notion that we have a democracy, when the very rich influence politics so powerfully. RD

Under Capitalism It's Always Temporary

A few years ago Atlantic City was a boom town with twelve casinos doing a roaring business. Four have them have been shut down this year with a fifth, "The Trump Mahal" (named after Mr. Midas touch), ready to follow. 8,000 casino workers are unemployed and those who have retained their jobs have had their hours cut as the incoming cash from the gamblers has fallen fifty per cent since 2006. The problem is competition and over supply. Overall, more than forty casinos in Pennsylvania, New York, Delaware, and Maryland have opened in less than a decade. This simply emphasizes that when things are going well under capitalism, it's always temporary. Security is only in the vocabulary of socialism/communism. John Ayers.

Homeless Figures Rising

'Rising numbers of people are at risk of homelessness in England, but official data does not show this, a study says. Research by charities Crisis and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation suggested "informal" methods used by councils to tackle the problem had masked a 9% rise in cases in 2013-14 - to 280,000 cases.' (BBC News, 4 February) Capitalism cannot even provide an essential like a place to live for many workers. RD

A Dog's Life

A US 60-year-old woman has willed a million-dollar  fortune consisting of jewellery, a trust fund and vacation home to her pet dog. Rose Ann Bolasny from New York decided to leave her valuables to her Maltese terrier named Bella Mia. "We decided that we had given her such a lavish life that we wanted to make sure she'd still have what she was accustomed to when I was gone," Bolasny was quoted as saying by the New York Post.' (New York Post, 20 January) This is happening whilst thousands of families are trying to survive on a couple of dollars  a day. RD  

Burned Alive

Militants of the Islamic State terror group in Syria and Iraq have burned alive captured Jordanian pilot Moaz al-Kasasbeh while he was locked helpless in a cage. This chilling footage shows the captured airman being set alight as the militants , plunged new depths of depravity. 'The expertly-edited footage, filmed from several camera angles, shows the pilot wearing an orange jumpsuit and seemingly doused in fuel, as a trail of petrol leading up to the iron bars of the cage is seen being set ablaze. Flames are seen quickly spreading across the dirt to the cage where they completely engulf the helpless pilot in images that are far too disturbing to publish.' (Daily Mail, 3 February) In the name of religious zeal there is no limits to the horrors of capitalism. RD