One for all, All for one

The ruling class claim for themselves the mantle of progress, logic, truth, beauty, and knowledge. They represent socialists as deluded, irrational, psychotic, violent and hateful. But just look at these critics of socialism; the militarist and perverted capitalists who would see a world plunged into barbarism before they relinquish a penny of their fabulous profits and the power-mad industrialists who calmly grind the working class to dust beneath the wheels of automation. Socialists are infinitely more rational than our class enemies. The socialist future is clearly within our grasp. And what better life can a person carve out than participation in the emancipation of humanity? What better use to make of one's life than in working towards a new civilisation? We look toward a time when we shall have ceased to mourn martyrs. A time when we are no longer occupied with accepting defeats and explaining betrayals. Not because we will have forgotten the past, but simply because we will be too busy creating a new world rich with freedom, plenty, humane relations between people, and the joy of living. For sure, we are still few and isolated, and the road ahead is uncertain and complex, nevertheless, we are dedicated to achieving human freedom because without it we know there is no freedom for us. People forced to fight on many fronts will begin to wonder about the reasons for having to struggle so often, so hard, and against so many enemies. It will dawn that something obviously must be wrong with the entire system; that our separate struggles have a common enemy, and we must find common cause and mutual solidarity if any of us is to survive. So we arrive at the answers: The problem is capitalism. The solution is socialism. Our task in the Socialist Party is to tell the truth to a disbelieving world. The world is in crisis. Capitalism, the prevailing system of society, is in process of destroying our planet. To the ripening condition for socialism must be added the maturity of the working class. Whenever the working class desires socialism, we will have socialism. It is impossible to have socialism in a country where small production is general as in the case of Russia. A weak ruling class, lacking the means of repression found in highly organized capitalist centres; a peasantry uneducated and consequently devoid of that respect for master class teaching inseparable from well developed industrial communities; a state of war in existence, which spelled starvation, bloodshed, and discontent for the masses; all these circumstances made possible the successful attempt of the Bolsheviks to capture political power. This they did. It is also impossible to have socialism where the vast majority of people do not desire it. In other words, socialism without democracy is unthinkable. The building of socialism requires widespread understanding and participation, and will not be achieved by an elite working “on behalf of” the people. Socialism and democracy are one and indivisible. Democracy in daily life is the core of our socialism.

THE SOCIALIST PARTY strives to establish a democracy that places people’s lives under their own control — a class-free society in which people cooperate at work and in the community. Socialism is not government ownership, a welfare state, or a repressive bureaucracy. Socialism is a new social and economic system. The production of society is used for the benefit of all humanity, not for the private profit of a few. Socialism produces a constantly renewable future by not plundering the resources of the earth. In a socialist system, the people own and control the means of production and distribution through democratically-controlled agencies. The goal of economic activity is to provide the necessities of life, including food, shelter, health-care, child-care, and cultural opportunities. Planning takes place at the community, regional, and global levels, and is determined democratically. Worker and community control make it possible to combine life at work, home and in the community into a meaningful whole.

People live in a society racked with crises. This society can neither guarantee them a secure future nor even promise there will be a future. The threat of nuclear war casts a shadow over the lives of all of us and an environmental apocalypse looms before us. This society places a premium on wealth. The vast majority of our people work out their lives for the enrichment of the small minority of profiteers who through their wealth control the entire society. The system is capitalism. Under it a small minority rule in fact if not in name, and profit is the be-all and end-all of economic life; human needs comes a distant second—if at all. People across the world need to cast off the systems which oppress them and build a new world fit for all humanity. The profit system cannot make use of automation for the benefit of society; socialism will. The future society that will be constructed under socialism will reduce work to an insignificant part of daily life and offer the individual the fullest possibilities to pursue his own abilities and interests. In politics, we don’t believe in choosing the “lesser evil” over a greater evil. We choose instead something good for working men and women: THE SOCIALIST PARTY!

Nationalist Cant

Up to possibly 15,000 nationalists rallied at Bannockburn where Robert the Bruce triumphed over English army for a separate Scottish sovereign state. A socialist does not have profound sympathy with the struggles of countrymen but with, fellow-workers; we do not demand service Irish or English or French but solidarity in the cause of our class. Nationalism will give our fellow-workers something to quarrel over for years to come, to the hindrance of propaganda for working-class solidarity against the international capitalist class.

The Socialist Standard has exposed this patriotic nonsense in an article from 2014

https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2014/no-1319-july-2014/bruce-and-bannockburn

De Brus or  Bruys at Bannockburn never fought for the people of Scotland – he fought to place a crown upon his head and create a royal dynasty.

Tremble, oppressors of the world!

The Socialist Party breaks with the deceptions of reformist politics and poses directly the central issue: the class struggle for socialism. Our success in an election campaign is not to be measured in votes won but in the extent and the depth to which they have succeeded in bringing the core issue before the consciousness of the masses. Demagogy means the adaptation of policy and campaigns to the prejudices of the audience to which it is hoped to appeal, without regard to the truth or correctness of principles.  Demagogy is the exploitation of ignorance in direct contrast to a principled position. The Socialist Party stands for its principles instead of pandering to prejudices. The issue for the working class is the CLASS issue. The working class must make its stand against the capitalist system – whose lust for profits and interest, for investments, markets, and expanded capital, for raw materials and cheap exploitable labour, can mean only exploitation and abject slavery. Then ALL the peoples of the world will indeed be free. For it must be understood that distribution is always ultimately controlled by those who own and control production. Today the bosses own. Tomorrow, the workers would own production, to control and direct distribution in the interests of the majority. It is us the task of the Socialist Party to take the anger and the hatred that our fellow-workers have toward this capitalist system and arm it with an understanding of why we have to live this way, whose fault it is and what we can do about it. It is only by understanding how capitalism runs against the interests of working people, of how capitalism must be fought by the working class and all others who can be united behind it and when the people can be armed with an understanding of capitalism as the enemy – then we can advance on the road to the socialist revolution. Only by completely getting rid of this system of wage slavery and its law of profits and the system in which the capitalists own and control everything, including us and our labour can we advance to socialism. We’ll sweep away the capitalist system and we’ll build our new future. A future where we workers will run the factories, produce for our needs and not for the profits of the capitalist bosses. There can be no gradual step-by-step process where we can win, it’s only by getting rid of the whole system of capitalism, that we can build a new society run by and for the working people.

Only when the stored-up labour is utilized for the social good, can we realize the full potentialities of human productivity. Only when accumulated labour belongs to those who produce it – to the worker who turns the wheels, instead of to the capitalist who reaps the dividends – will men and women be free. Hunger in the midst of plenty is the distinguishing mark of the capitalist system of production. The tremendous power of technology produces commodities far beyond the possibilities of control by the profit system. The anarchy of production for the market brings about the shutdown of plants, widespread unemployment, bankruptcies of businesses, disruption of world trade, disturbance of the monetary and financial system, the frantic search of capitalists for new outlets and new markets. Hunger, disease, and death stalk all the peoples of the planet. This is the capitalist world. This is the world of competition, of exploitation, of production for profit. The capitalist world remains an armed camp awaiting only the passage of a few more years before it is ready to plunge into another bloody carnage to determine which of the great powers shall dominate the world in the interest of profit. Capitalism outlived its usefulness long ago. It is no longer capable of progress, of raising the standards of living of the people. Capitalism is only capable of guaranteeing new misery. All capitalist enterprises are out to produce as much as it can, to grab as much of the market as it can, for it is in sales that it realises its profits. Capital is simply money and commodities assigned to create a profit and be reinvested. Profit is made by the "magical" addition of surplus value to the value inherent in the product. The "added value," the profit, is produced by workers. And this capital is born to expand or die. To be useful, the investment must result not only in a profit but at a growing rate of profit. The value of a commodity comes from the labor invested in it, including the labor that manufactured the machinery and extracted the raw materials used to create the item. And the boss' profits do not come from his smarts or his capital investment or his mark-up, but from the value created by labor - specifically, surplus-value.

Surplus value derives from unpaid wages. The worker is never paid for the value of the product, only for the value of her or his labour time, which is considerably less, and which meanders widely depending upon the historical, cultural and social conditions of a country. Labour-power is miraculous, like the Virgin Birth. You get more out of it than you put in. Workers produce a commodity which has more value than what they get in wages to keep them functioning. This differential is surplus value, which is the source of capital. The secret of value, the labour theory of value, that was unearthed by the classical economists and by Marx is what the money barons fear and hate. It is the secret that will set the world free. People will learn how to control the supposedly sacred, eternal, and inscrutable method of production and distribution that now controls us.

But the people of the world want an end to this system. They want jobs, peace, freedom, security. They want a new life; they want a change from the chaos of the profit system, that system of “free enterprise” which has proved its incapacity to maintain production in the interest of the people. A new life, a new social, system, that is, socialism, is the only hope for humanity. When we fight for peace, freedom, security and plenty for all, they are fighting for socialism, which alone can guarantee these blessings. Socialists will produce for use according to a reasonable plan and without a thought for the odious notion of profit. And with no insatiable parasitic class to maintain, socialist society will produce abundance for all. That's a fact. The global human family will arrange its standard of living as easily as affluent families do today.

Scots Wealth

The amount of wealth owned by Scots households has broken through the £1 trillion mark, following increases in property values and pension pots. That's £1,000,000,000,000, or a million million pounds. It is more than five times the value of the nation's economic output in one year.

But  household wealth is very unevenly spread. It is nearly twice as unequal as inequality in income levels. A quarter of Scots have savings of less than £500.

Using figures from 2014 to 2016, the median Scottish household - with half the country more wealthy and one half less so - was found to have £237,000 in wealth. The big difference is in property wealth - a median of £65,000 in Scotland to £95,000 in Britain. This is skewed by high property prices in London and south-east England. The Resolution Foundation estimate is of Scottish household property wealth totalling £285bn.

By far the largest share of wealth - some £543bn - is in pension investments. The median Scottish household is thought to have £70,000 put aside in pensions. Financial wealth, including investment products such as shares and bonds, comes to £100bn in total, and is very unevenly spread. Physical wealth is thought to total £122bn, including other assets people own, from cars and yachts to furniture and artwork.

• Income Gap: It highlights the growth in wealth at a higher pace than the rise in incomes. That means it takes longer to earn and save money with which to become wealthy. In the past decade, Scottish wealth has grown from being five times bigger than total output of the economy (also known as income) to more than seven times.
• Generation Gap: The generational divide on wealth is much greater than the divide on incomes. Taking every five year period since 1965, each successive cohort of Scots has had less wealth than their predecessors at the same age. That divide is clearest for those aged around 43. For those born in the five years up to 1975, at the age of 35 they had median wealth of £52,000. But for those born in the five years after 1975 (now aged 38 to 43), at the age of 35, they had median wealth of £33,000. One reason for this is the big dip in home ownership rates for people in that age group, though it has not dipped as far as Britain as a whole.
• Legacy Gap: While older parents continue to build up wealth, much of it through property values and relatively generous pensions, wealth is transferred when they pass it on to their sons and daughters. "What you inherit, rather than what you earn, is set to become a much more important determinant of your lifetime living standards in the years ahead," according to Torsten Bell, director of the Resolution Foundation and co-researcher on The £1 Trillion Pie. He notes that revenue from inheritance tax paid in Scotland rose by 30% in the two years to 2014-15. A further twist is that those who stand to inherit wealth when their parents die are having to wait longer, because their parents are typically living longer. The peak age at which the average millennial, now aged 20 to 35, will outlive both parents is around 60.
• Tax Gap: The report also notes that taxation on wealth has not kept pace with wealth, when counted as a share of national income. For the past 50 years or so, the payment of wealth-based taxes has amounted to around 2.5% of total economic output in any one year. Co-author Conor d'Arcy said: "While some wealth taxes are set in Westminster, including inheritance tax, the biggest wealth tax, Council Tax, is fully devolved. Recent modest reforms have improved council tax in Scotland, in marked contrast to the lack of progress in England, but the tax could still be much more closely tied to property values."
• Regional Gap: Where wealth is held in property, those who do best and can pass on most to their family have benefited from living in areas where property prices have risen faster than average. The average value of a property in Edinburgh is more than £250,000. There are 11 council areas with average prices at less than half that.

‘Survival’ shoplifting

Tayside’s top police officer revealed shoplifting offences have risen by 23% in the past year.

Chief Superintendent Paul Anderson blamed the increase in shoplifting offences in Angus on increasing poverty.

Some agencies have warned that one of the reasons for shoplifting is levels of unemployment, benefits being cut and struggles to cope with the cost of living.

https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/news/local/angus-mearns/674287/survival-shoplifting-rise-linked-to-austerity/

The Struggle for Socialism

No matter how much we organise, no matter how many resolutions we pass, no matter how often we march, we might still end up in a catastrophe. That is an uncomfortable truth: even as we up our resistance. The capitalist class will attempt to profit from human misery to the very end. Despite record food output globally, hunger still prevails in many parts of the planet and even in regions of the more developed nations. Today’s world is characterised by the coexistence of agricultural bounty and widespread hunger and malnutrition. Recent years have seen a reversal of a decades-old trend of falling hunger, alongside the re-emergence of famine. How will we distribute and share food and water? How do we ensure that national frontiers will be irrelevant when children, women, and men seek refuge. What will we do to protect our sisters and brothers? How will we care for one another when we get sick from hunger and disease? What will we do to keep the greedy and the hateful from doing further harm to the planet? 

When we talk about the inevitability of socialism we assume that the workers will continue to struggle for their rights. Were they, on the other hand, to sit down tamely and wait till socialism came to them, they would soon lose all the rights that they have now and become mere slaves. Socialism can only come when the workers are no longer willing to allow themselves to be exploited.  When the workers become so class-conscious and so well organised as to make their exploitation impossible then capitalism would have reached its end. That is what we understand by social revolution.

The great justification for reformism lies in the fact that they make it easier for the workers to organise themselves and enlighten themselves about the real meaning of capitalism and the part that they are forced to play under it, and show the thinking worker how futile it is to dream of reforming capitalism. They furnish besides that a rallying ground for those workers who cannot see beyond their own nose, and perhaps would not understand Socialism, but do feel the need for a shorter working day. A great danger, however, arises when good-intentioned people try to persuade the workers that socialism only means the sum of a number of petty palliative measure; that the Welfare State is also socialism. By that means socialism gets the credit for measures which were all but in name legislation for defending capitalism against socialism and all their failings which arise are used to discredit socialism.

A socialist means a man or a woman who recognises the class war between the proletariat and the possessing class as the inevitable historic outcome of the capitalist system and of the direct economic and social antagonisms which it has engendered and fostered, who sees that those antagonisms can only be resolved by the complete control over all the great means of production and distribution thus abolishing the class state and the wages system, and constituting a co-operative commonwealth.  The principal function of the Socialist Party is to participate in the class struggle in such a way that the workers are educated to realise their political power. The goal of the Socialist Party is socialism, not a reformed capitalism. Its tactics must be those that will bring about socialism.

The Socialist Party tells the workers that socialism is the only remedy for their troubles. There is no time which is not a proper time for them to work for socialism. This is true whatever the excuse offered by defenders of capitalism. Whether the crisis is a war crisis or a trade crisis, the Socialist Party will continue to preach socialism. Workers who understand the working of capitalism will see through the excuses to the capitalist interests behind them and will help us with our task. The only solution to the economic problems of the workers is socialism. Sadly the average worker is unable to see any alternative to the profit system. With socialism, there will be no wages at all.  With socialism, men and women will receive a share of what has been produced by the common social labour. They will receive it on the basis of having participated in that social labour in one way or another, and not, as in capitalism, on the basis of the amount of expended work they have accomplished. With socialism, goods are produced for the use of men and women and NOT for the profits which they bring in to bosses. Labour power ceases to be regarded as a commodity to be bought and sold. It is not purchased at all, let alone purchased at the lowest possible price to keep it alive and able to produce more value. Men and women in socialism, will work and produce useful goods. But they will produce these for their mutual needs and for their mutual development. The sufficiency of goods which men and machines can create will be given to people to develop their bodies so that their minds can grow rich in the wealth of human knowledge, aesthetic appreciation, and artistic creation. From day to day, from week to week, and from year to year, the spiral of possible individual activity will widen rather than taper, as human productive and intellectual achievements increase. Men and women, no longer fettered by the necessity of working not only for their own maintenance but for the bosses’ profits, will be freed to live more fully. The time that each must work will be less, yet the goods produced for all to enjoy will be plentiful.

We will have been freed from the capitalist system and also from wage labour, price, and profit. That is why, instead of the conservative motto, “A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work,” workers must inscribe on their banner the REVOLUTIONARY watchword: “Abolition of the wage system!” Socialism is the ONLY answer!

You must believe in your power to change the world.

Down through the years, the ruling class has suppressed or distorted the socialist message so that its ideas are misrepresented and misunderstood. A society that permits poverty and hunger amidst plenty and abundance stands self-condemned. The Socialist Party is pitted against the whole profit-making system. It insists that there can be no compromise so long as the majority of the working class lives in want, while the master class lives in luxury. There can be no peace until the workers organise as a class, take possession of the resources of the earth and the machinery of production and distribution, and abolish the wage-system. In other words, the workers' collectivity must own and operate all the essential industrial institutions in common. Surely it is right that the creators of wealth should own what they create and that we learn that we are all related one to the other, members of one body and that injury to one is an injury to all?  No matter how much we think about it, everything comes back to the question of the overthrow of capital as an economic and political entity. If it is not done, reforms in the economic structure can get us nowhere. We have to abolish this worker-capitalist relationship.

 The planet's productive capacity is not fully utilized. Its use is governed by the dictates of private economic power and by considerations of, private profit. Similarly, the scramble for profit has wasted and despoiled our rich resources of soil, water, forest, and minerals. Our human resources are wasted through social and economic conditions stunt human growth. Our industry can and should be so operated as to enable our people to use fully their talents and skills. Such an economy will yield the maximum opportunities for individual development and the maximum of goods and services for the satisfaction of human needs. Under the capitalist system, basic goods and services are produced and obtained from the market.  This means that a wide range of human activity is subject to the market and determined by its requirements in a way that was never true before. The workers who supply our goods and services are market-dependent because they generally live by selling their labour-power for a wage. In other words, labour-power has become a commodity. Capitalists depend on the market to purchase labour power and capital goods, and to sell what the workers produce. Workers are paid for their work. What are they actually paid for? They’re paid for their laboUr power for a certain period of time, not for what they actually produce during that time. Whatever the workers produce belongs to the capitalist, and the capitalist appropriates the difference between what the workers are paid and what their products or services will fetch on the market. So capitalists appropriate the surpluses produced by workers in the form of profit. It’s not done by means of direct coercive force but through the market.

Capitalists have to compete with other capitalists in the same market. Competition is, in fact, the driving force of capitalism — even if capitalists often do their best to avoid it, by means, for example, of monopolies. But the social conditions that, in any given market, determine success in price competition is beyond the control of individual capitalists. Since their profits depend on a favorable cost/price ratio, the obvious strategy for capitalists is to cut their own costs. This means above all constant pressure to cut the costs of labor. This requires constant pressure on wages, which workers constantly have to resist. It also requires constant improvements in labor productivity. That means finding the organizational and technical means of extracting as much surplus as possible from workers within a fixed period of time, at the lowest possible cost.

To keep this process going requires regular investment, the reinvestment of surpluses. Investment requires constant capital accumulation. So there’s a constant need to maximise profit. The point is that this requirement is imposed on capitalists, regardless of their own personal needs and wants. Even the most modest and socially responsible capitalist is subject to these pressures and is forced to accumulate by maximising profit, just to stay in business. We can talk as much as we like about corporate social responsibility. But capitalism itself puts severe limits on that. The need to adopt maximizing strategies is a basic feature of the system and not just a function of irresponsibility or greed — although it’s certainly true that a system based on market principles will inevitably place a premium on wealth and encourage a culture of greed. There’s no such thing as a capitalism governed by popular power, no capitalism in which the will of the people takes precedence over the imperatives of profit and accumulation, no capitalism in which the requirements of profit maximization doesn’t dictate the most basic conditions of life. The essential condition for the very existence of capitalism is that the most basic conditions of life have been commodified, turned into commodities subject to the dictates of profit and the “law”’ of the market. Production is determined not by what’s needed but by what makes the most profit. Everyone, for instance, needs decent housing, but good and affordable housing for everyone isn’t profitable for private capital. There may be a huge demand for such housing, but it’s not what the economists call “effective demand,” the kind of demand with real money behind it. If capital is invested in housing, it’s most likely to be high-cost homes for people with money. That’s the whole point of capitalism. Where production is skewed to the maximization of profit, a society can have massive productive capacities. It can have enough to feed, clothe, and house its whole population to a very high standard. But it can still have massive poverty, homelessness, and inadequate health care. You only have to look at the United States, where there are some of the highest rates of poverty in the developed world and where tens of millions have no access to affordable health care. What possible excuse can there be for that in a society with such enormous wealth and productive capacities? Capitalism is inefficient in another sense too. With its emphasis on profit maximisation and capital accumulation, it’s necessarily a wasteful and destructive system of production. It consumes vast amounts of resources; and it acts on the short-term requirements of profit rather than the long-term needs of a sustainable environment.

Capitalism Can't Be Run In Working Class Interests

June 7 is the date of the Ontario provincial election with PC leader Doug Ford leading in the public opinion polls. The NDP, under Andrea Horwath are second and incumbent Premier Kathleen Wynne Trailing them. Already the childish behaviour of the participants are coming out with Wynnes campaign manager David Herle speaking of Ford as, ''a bit of a dick''. 

The main issue is the opposition of the PC's and the NDP to the Liberal government's privatization of Hydro One, which raised $9 billion to pay off debts and build infrastructure. Horwath has been particularly outspoken promising to buy it back bit by bit. However, whatever the issues might be they have one common thread they are all matters of attempting to run capitalism and therefore are fundamentally of no benefit to the working class. 

Whoever wins on June 7 it will mean a continuation of capitalism, which causes the issues that will decide the result. There is only one issue worth voting on: “Fire your boss, dump the swindlers, and run civilization in the interests of yourself and All!”

 For socialism, 
Steve, Mehmet, John & contributing members of the SPC.

Our Goal

“The earth shall rise on new foundations;
We have been naught, we shall be all!” 
The Internationale

Since the Socialist Party was founded its  aim has been the realisation of a society based on equality of condition for all persons without distinction of race, sex or creed; a society which will not recognise the right of any privilege to interfere with that equality, whether such privilege rests its claim on birth, wealth or faculties in an individual. The Socialist Party holds that the necessary step to the achievement of this society is the abolition of monopoly ownership in the means of production, which should be owned by no individual or corporation, but by the whole community, in order that the use of them may be free to all in recognition of the maxim ‘from each according to ability, to each according to needs’.

Our party is a party of the revolution. The socialist revolution is the only solution of the labour problem and all our work must lead to this goal. This is our starting point in every field of activity in the class struggle. It is this fundamental conception that distinguishes us from all other parties in the labour movement. It is what that binds us together into one party. The revolutionary aspirations of our party give the party its driving power. Woe to us if we become so “practical” as to forget this for one moment. All our work must lead toward the socialist revolution. If we keep this always in mind and measure all our work by this standard we will keep on the right road. The revolutionary principles to which we are committed put upon us responsibilities which cannot be shifted or evaded if we are to live up to our conception of the party. We have to stand up and fight for the true interests of the working class as a whole, at every turn of the road. Ours is the only party standing for the solution of our social problems by means of the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism. Our party is a party of revolutionary workers, a party of revolutionary struggle against capitalism and all its works. We are not reformists, but revolutionists.  Workers have the power to paralyse the entire system. Such is the conception of our party, the idea of socialism as the self-emancipation of the working class. We must build a mass revolutionary socialist party now, no matter how difficult and discouraging the circumstances may be.

In their everyday life, workers pour their sweat into production and, in capitalist society, experience the life-killing exploitation on which the system is built. They take part in struggles, together with fellow workers, against the abuses and outrages of the capitalist system. Each worker perceives the reality of capitalism. The goal of the Socialist Party is freedom, freedom from hunger and poverty, freedom from war, freedom from endless toil and exploitation, freedom from racial and sexual oppression. These can only be made a reality by establishing socialism. Capitalism has exhausted its progressive role; now it is time for a better system. The working class in society holds a special position. It has no property. It is a propertyless class—dependent upon the class which owns property—the land, the factories, mills, mines, railways, transport. But the land cannot give forth its fullness unless workers plough and sow and reap. The earth cannot deliver its mineral wealth unless workers dig it. Factories, mills, mines, railways, etc., cannot work unless workers are employed to make them serve their purpose in the transformation of nature’s wealth into social wealth. It is this fact which compels the owners of the means of producing wealth to employ labour. They need that labour or their ownership ceases to be of value. That is why the withdrawal of labour by the workers can be so powerful a weapon when used on a large scale. Socialism is the name given to that form of society in which there is no such thing as a propertyless class, but in which the whole community has become a working community owning the means of production—the land, factories, mills, mines, transport and all the means whereby wealth is created and distributed to the community. It will be obvious at once that the basic principles of Socialist society are diametrically opposite to those of Capitalist society in which we live. Socialism stands for social or community property. Capitalism stands for private or state property. Socialism is a society without classes. Capitalism is divided into classes—the class owning property and the propertyless working class. We can easily understand, therefore, why the great majority of landlords, employers of labour, financiers and the like are opposed to Socialism. Their very existence as the receivers of rent, interest, and profit is at stake.

Scots without a home

The number of applications for homelessness status in Scotland has gone up for the first time nine years, according to official figures.

Graeme Brown, Director of Shelter Scotland, said the "shocking" statistics should start alarm bells ringing in Holyrood. Mr Brown also warned the figures were "clear evidence" that the good progress made in recent years was now being reversed.

"Every 18 minutes a household was made homeless in Scotland last year with 34,972 homelessness applications - more than last year. For the fourth year in a row the number of homeless children living in temporary accommodation has risen - up 9% to 6,615. And people are having to stay longer in temporary accommodation with their lives in limbo."

Recalling the Socialist Party of North America

Manifesto of the Socialist Party
of North America (1911)

In 1910, several branches of the Socialist Party of Canada, located in Toronto and Southern Ontario, split away to form the Socialist Party of North America. The SPNA was strongly influenced by the Socialist Party of Great Britain, and a former SPGB member, Moses Baritz, played a key role in its founding. As the title of its Manifesto indicates, the party took a strong position against any support for reforms.

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"Emancipation not Palliation"

Socialism vs. Capitalism

To understand socialism, one must necessarily understand the present social system; i.e., capitalism.

Under capitalism, society is divided into hostile classes: an owning capitalist class, whose members have ownership of the various parts of the instruments of wealth production.

This includes: The land, the factories, the railroads, the mines, and steamships, etc., upon which the whole of the people are dependent for their existence.

A working class, whose members possess nothing but their labor power, which is useless to the worker unless he can have access to the raw material and the machinery of production, which is owned by the capitalist class.

This being so, the worker, in order to live, must sell his labor power to the capitalist or capitalist concern.

This labor power that the worker sells to his employer is used for the production of wealth, for which the worker receives what is termed wages.

Wages are the price of labor power; that is to say, the capitalist will have to return to the worker the amount of necessities he must consume while exerting his labor power. This amount will vary with the value of these necessities and the standard of living, but it will invariably be less than the amount of goods his labor power produces. This is a necessity, not alone of this system, but of any social system of wealth production in which only a part of the members of society are actually engaged in useful labor; so that when a man sells his labor power a number of hours for a certain wage, the amount of necessaries to produce his wages is always smaller than the amount of labor which the employer receives from him, the difference between what the worker receives as wages and what his labor power produces during his working time, constitutes the sole source of unearned income, i.e., capitalist profits. Here we see laid bare the secret and mysterious source of the wealth of those, who, without producing themselves, obtain possession of the wealth of society.

Capitalism had its beginnings in the development of industry and commerce. With the application of machinery to productive industry, a tremendous change has followed in the whole superstructure of society. With the development of the hand tool into the machine, the independent mechanic has been forced into the factory, divorced from the means of production, a dependent on the machine owner.

As the machinery increases in size and cost, so does it squeeze out the weaker capitalist, whilst the stronger ones unite into combines and trusts; so that we see competition increasing among the workers, whilst among the capitalists combination is the rule.

Thus does capitalism go steadily onward; first an individual competitive state, then on to collectivism, less and less competitive. Surely this cannot last for ever! A point is reached where it becomes unbearable for the workers. Collective labor and increasing competition among them clash with the collective capitalism and increasing combination of the capitalist. The contradiction must be abolished. The expropriators must be expropriated, the workers who collectively use the tools of production must also collectively own them. Classes in society abolished and a new order of society inaugurated in which poverty may give place to comfort, privilege to equality and slavery to freedom.

How will this transformation from capitalism to socialism be accomplished, and who will bring it about?

Socialists maintain that social progress since written history has always been through the struggle of classes with opposing interests. These interests to-day are represented by the capitalists, who are the rulers and the workers who are the ruled.

Hence, the next step in social progress must lie in the victory of the workers.

The capitalists, however, are powerfully entrenched behind the state, which is the powers of government; this includes the legal, civil, and armed forces; this is the political power controlled by the capitalists in their interests, viz., to preserve their ownership in the means of wealth production. But in the hands of the class conscious workers these would be used as an instrument for their emancipation.

Therefore, to accomplish their universal freedom, the workers must be organized into a political party of their class with a full knowledge of their conditions, and the meaning of the momentous act it is called upon to accomplish, viz., the emancipation of the workers from slavery and establishment of a new order of society based upon the ownership of the means of wealth production, by and in the interest of the whole community. With this object in view, we solicit the support of all members of the working class. Our slogan must be: "Workers of the world, unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains, a world to gain."

The Price Tag On Health

Walkerton is in the news again. Its been 18 years since a deadly E.coli outbreak devastated this rural town, 150 kilometers northwest of Toronto. Seven people died; 2,500, which is half the town, became ill. Walkerton's water supply became contaminated. A heavy rainstorm washed cow manure carrying a strain of E.coli into a town well and because of improper chlorination, the bacteria was not destroyed. 

Many were sick with gastrointestinal issues like bloody diarrhea and were given a 30 per cent chance of high blood pressure and kidney damage. Twenty-two children had permanent kidney damage, but treatment stopped the illness from getting worse. This was one of the worst public health disasters in Canadian history.

 On May12 the Toronto Star focused on its front page the plight of ex-Ontario Police Officer Robbie Schnurr, who visited Walkerton on a hot day 18 years ago and had the misfortune to drink some water and has been deteriorating ever since. He said the infection destroyed his immune system and led to a neurological disorder that causes the body's immune system to break down and destroy the sheath that covers the nerves. 

To quote Schnurr, ''There's nothing to look forward to, there's no goals in life, there's nothing''. 

Therefore Schnurr fulfilled his wish for a doctor-assisted death. The whole Walkerton tragedy was caused by two men on the Walkerton Public Utilities Commission who did not have sufficient training for the job – something that saved money, one supposes, but to emphasize that under capitalism there is a price tag on everything.

For socialism, 
Steve, Mehmet, John &contributing members of the SPC.

Workers have no stake in capitalism

All the hopes of a better future and the promises of prosperity just around the corner keep crashing down, time after time. Fewer and fewer people are satisfied with the status quo. But the powerful ideology of “There Is No Alternative” (TINA) has constrained many people’s political imagination and consigned them to political apathy; our task as socialists is to convince them that there is, indeed, an alternative to capitalism. Discussions about socialism inevitably depend on what is meant by “socialism” in the first place. Socialism means a class-free society, and a class-free society means that a privileged minority is not in a position to enjoy the wealth, while the majority live only on their labour to produce it. It means especially that privileged individuals who do have excess income cannot invest it in the instruments of production with which others work, thus reducing them to a position of fixed subservience. It means an end of rent, profit, and interest on stocks and bonds, an end of “surplus value,” an end of the exploitation of labour. The Socialist Party does not hide the fact that we are consistent enemies of capitalism. Our aim is to replace capitalism by socialism because it is absolutely necessary to the survival of civilisation. We hold that capitalism has outlived its usefulness. We are convinced that if capitalism is allowed to continue, we will be plunged into barbarism. In a word, we hold that capitalism is bankrupt and that if humanity is to advance it must move on to socialism. A socialist society means peace, security, prosperity, freedom, and equality - all the things that the working people, the little people of society, have always wanted and longed for.

Capitalist society, like all class societies, is divided into unequals. So long as one class continues to own the means of production, and another class owns nothing but its ability to work, which it is compelled to sell to the other class in order to live – the best government in the world, composed of the best men and adopting the best laws, cannot possibly establish equality between the two classes. If one class owns, it will always exploit and rule the class that does not own.  The capitalist government is an instrument for maintaining the power over society of the capitalist class and for suppressing the class that is ruled over, the workers. A machine whose basic function is to maintain the rule of one class over another is necessarily also a machine of oppression. That is essentially the purpose for the police and the prisons.  The capitalist class owns and controls the means of creating and influencing opinion through its control of the  media. In countless ways it instills its class ideas into the minds of the workers. It poisons their thinking. It not only gets them to believe that capitalism is eternal and benevolent, but that socialism is unnecessary and impossible. It even gets many workers to oppose such elementary necessities as trade unions. Capitalist society is organised against the working class. The capitalist class is an irreconcilable enemy of the workers. Political equality is a myth. The capitalist class do ninety-nine per cent of the talking and writing, because of its economic power, and the working class only one per cent. Political power gives the capitalist class an overwhelming advantage over its workers in influencing votes and thereby determining elections.

Socialism alone can give its true meaning to the whole idea of human justice.  The Socialist Party maintains that the means of production and wealth acquired and accumulated by humanity should be at the disposal of humanity. Socialism is the common ownership of the means of production and distribution and their democratic organisation and management by all the people in a society free of classes, class divisions and class rule. Socialism is the democratic organisation of production for use, of production for abundance, of plenty for all, without the exploitation of man by man. Socialism is the union of the whole world into a global federation of free and equal people, disposing in common of the natural resources and wealth of our planet. Can this great ideal ever be realised? It can and must be realised. It can be realised because it is capitalism itself that has prepared the two main and indispensable conditions for socialism. The first condition is such a highly developed industry, such a highly developed technique of production, such a highly developed social (instead of individual) way of producing the means of life, that it is now possible to organise our economic life to produce in abundance for all in a minimum of working time. The second condition is the development of a modern working class whose interests are so diametrically opposed to the interests of the capitalist class that it is compelled, in sheer self-defence, to replace capitalism by a rational socialist society, and which is so numerous and mighty that it is able to replace capitalism by socialism. Socialist production is organised for use, not for profit. Production is carried on in a planned, coordinated, democratically-administered way, not on the basis of whether or not the private capitalist can make a profit on the market.

Where there is abundance for all, the nightmare of insecurity vanishes. There are jobs for all, and they are no longer dependent on whether or not the employer can make a fat profit in a fat market. There is not only a high standard of living, but every industrial advance is followed by a rising standard of living and a declining working-day. Where there is abundance for all, and where no one has the economic power to exploit and oppress others, the basis of classes, class division, and class conflict vanishes. The basis of a ruling state, of a government of violence and repression, with its prisons and police and army, also disappears. Police and thieves, prisons and violence are inevitable where there is economic inequality or abundance for the few and scarcity for the many. They disappear when there is plenty for all, therefore economic equality, therefore social equality. Where there is abundance for all, and where all have equal access to the fruits of the soil and the wealth of industry, the mad conflicts and wars between nations and peoples vanish. With them vanishes the irrepressible urge that exists under capitalism for one nation to subject others, to rob it of its rights, to exploit and oppress it, to provoke and maintain the hideous national and racial antagonisms that cling to capitalism like an ineradicable bloodstain. Where mankind is free of economic exploitation, of economic inequality, of economic insecurity, he is free for the first time to develop as a human being among his fellow human beings, free to contribute to the unfolding of a new culture and a new humanity.

We are revolutionary socialists who believe that capitalism — as a system centred on private accumulation and profit — is inherently a system of inequality, injustice, and war. We want a social system where social wealth is not in the hands of a few billionaires, but is controlled by the people. We seek both economic and political democracy. Our enemy is capitalism. Capitalism dominates our economic system. Under capitalism, a handful who own the factories, the mines, food industries, and the banks control the wealth that the majority of the people produce. It is this system that we are fighting. Capitalism organises globally. Blocs of capital compete intensely for growth and profits. Under capitalism you either destroy the competition, or are destroyed yourself. This drive sends the corporations around the world, seeking cheaper raw materials and corrupt local governments that will ensure a "friendly investment climate." Capitalism continuously seeks cheaper labour costs. Capitalism is a system of violence. Poverty is built into its operation. The capitalist class needs to maintain its grip on the levers of power.

The struggle for a liveable and sustainable planet is a life-and-death issue. Capitalist greed has polluted our air, destroyed the forests, poisoned our waters, and drenched our food with toxic chemicals. Our survival necessitates control of technology and production and the elimination of the blind competition and consumerism that causes us to squander so many of the world's resources needlessly. We work to develop a new vision to deepen our understanding of the relationship between humanity and the rest of nature. People will have to change how they live and how society is organised. Only conscious socialist planning by all of society can make this a reality. 

Glasgow Branch Meeting (20/6)

Wednesday, 20 June
 7:00pm - 9:00pm

Venue: Maryhill Community Central Halls, 
304 Maryhill Road, 
Glasgow G20 7YE

The Socialist Party position is honest in that we don't know what the characteristics of revolution will look like in detail but we do think we know what it won't look like. Some expect the Socialist Party to be soothsayers. The problem is that it is rather useless for us today to declare what tomorrow exactly is going to happen when socialism is imminent. Will the working class (even a socialist one that is highly politically educated) wait for the declaration of its elected representatives or delegates in Parliament and legislatures? What happens when say 55 per cent of the working class says "Let's do it now!" What happens if the majority of workers in the UK and Europe start to elect Socialist majorities, but not in the U.S., Japan, etc.? And what if the State (the state capitalist State and private capitalist State) do begin to exert their powers to stifle the movement? Do we then sit and wait again for our chance? What constitutes a working-class majority wanting Socialism. Is it 51 per cent? 60 %? 75%? It is a futile exercise to make. We simply cannot foresee the events that take place even when say 30 % of the working class becomes socialist.

 If, for example, that we reached the stage where 20% of the adult working population was indeed socialist. That would be an incredible achievement and there would be a sudden rise in working-class militancy in immediate issues, there would be a new "socialist culture" being built, changes within the entire labour movement, in daily life and how people thought politically. At 40% we would still not be the "overwhelming majority" but this would be such a sizeable significant and politically powerful base. And here quantitative changes would mean qualitative changes. The "movement" we have now would not be the same movement under those circumstances. It might move in directions we have never even considered. And it has profound implications. It is too difficult for us to simply say that when the overwhelming majority of people around the world want socialism they will create it because there will indeed rise these very revolutionary situations or critical revolutionary crisis or juncture that have not followed the formal logic of the propositions we put forward. The "movement" will take on a life of its own.

The Socialist Party cannot control whether or not workers become socialists. What we can provide, and what we have continuously provided, is a theory of revolution which, if it had been taken up by workers, would have prevented incalculable misery to millions.

For example, in 1917, the Bolsheviks were convinced that they were setting society in Russia on a course of change towards socialism. The Party argued that socialism was not being established in Russia. What followed was the horrendous misery of the Stalinist years. The Party put forward the same view of events in China in 1949.

What is happening in Russia and China now? The rulers of these state capitalist regimes introduced free-market capitalism.

We warned against situations where groups or sections of workers try to stage the revolution or implement socialism when the rest of the working class is not prepared. They will only be prepared when they accept the need to capture political power and THEN the implementation of Socialism based on majority support can begin. Otherwise, you may have a situation where a minority may push the majority into a situation it is not prepared for and the results could be disastrous.

What comes to mind is the situation in Germany in 1919 when large groups of workers supported the Spartacus group while the majority of the working class still supported the Social Democratic Party. The uprising was put down brutally and the working class was divided.

In regards to gradualism and reformism when in 1945 the Labour Party was elected with the objective of establishing a "socialist" Britain, the Socialist Party, again arguing from its theory, insisted that there would be no new social order. In fact, that Labour Government steered capitalism in Britain through the post-war crisis, enabling it to be massively expanded in the boom years of the 1950s. What is happening in the Labour Party now? Confused and directionless, it stands utterly bankrupt of ideas. The Labour Party even abandoned its adherence to Keynesian theories which the Socialist Party always insisted could never provide policies which would remove the anarchy of capitalism. Its ideas on the progressive introduction of socialism are now only a distant memory.

The arguments from the Socialist Party has not been abstract, for it relates to the real experiences of workers today, and we constantly make clear in our speaking and writing that socialism is the immediately practical solution to workers' so-called "short-term interests".

The Socialist Party is well aware that revolution will not "simply" be the result of our educational efforts. Our appeal to workers is upon the basis of class interest and our appeal will be successful because the class struggle generates class consciousness in workers. The growth of socialist consciousness and organisation will allow workers to prosecute the class struggle more effectively. Socialist consciousness won't entirely emerge "spontaneously" out of the day-to-day struggle, which is given as an excuse for not advocating socialism by those such as Trotskyists who think it will. It has been claimed by some of them that all socialists need to do is to get involved in the day to day struggle. The justification for advocating socialism as such is that socialist ideas do have to be brought to workers, though not from outside, from the "bourgeois intelligentsia" or the "proletarian vanguard", but from inside, from members of the working class who have come to see that socialism is the way-out. We, in the Socialist Party, are members of the working class spreading socialist ideas amongst our fellow workers. We are a part of the "spontaneous" process of the emergence of socialist consciousness.